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ALL MANKIND A UNITY: 



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A New Dispensation, 



SOCIAL AND/RELIGIOUS. 



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Asa K. Butts, No. 9 Dky Street, New York City. 




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THE PRESENT DISPENSATION; 

ITS THEOLOGICAL IDEAS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES. 

i^HAT IS the condition of the people in the United 
fm/S> States and Europe in this year 1878 of the Chris- 
tian era? There is a large class having 
u great possessions," who enjoy the wealth of the world 
and control its trade. There is a still larger class — the 
great majority — possessed of little or nothing, who do the 
work of the world and create its wealth. Everywhere are 
full granaries, crammed warehouses of goods, abundance of 
food and clothing, and every material element for progress 
and contentment. And yet trade and production is almost 
at a stand-still. • Thousands of men and women wander 
about unemployed and half starved. Every prison and 
workhouse is filled with those who were once honest workers. 
The masses are being driven back into barbaric conditions, 
and corresponding instincts and practices are in process 
of development. Society rests upon a volcano. Christi- 
anity itself has become unchristianised. Its ministers, as 
usual, are the apologists for social wrongs and religious 
tyranny. 

Shall a destructive social outbreak be invited and defied, 
or shall an attempt be made to remedy fundamental errors 
in our existing social system ? 

How shall we discover or institute what is needed ? 
The ruling classes of society are deaf and blind to the 
exigencies of the times. Our political parties are wrang- 



8 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

on to the skirts of an imaginary personal deity, as parts of 
his necessary and rightful attire. God must be looked at 
through the priests and the creeds and in no other way. 
To doubt these is held to deny the existence of God and all 
his attributes. The whole effort of priestcraft, either in 
savage or civilised life, is to keep the people in gross theo- 
logical darkness. Outside of the churches we are confronted 
with all the advances of modern discoveries, and the acces- 
sories to a high civilisation. Inside of the churches human- 
ity is lullabied to sleep under the antiquated theologies that 
were cotemporary with the ancient Egyptians and the 
insane crusaders. When men go into a church they enter 
a tomb, inscribe 1 ! with a creed that lived so many hundred 
years since. Tfie modern world of thought and action is 
given up for the ancient one of incongruous dreams. 

How long can such a religious status endure under the 
pressure of modern discoveries and advances? Shall all 
progress stand still, or shall religion be freed from its 
ancient bonds, and the soul as well as the body of man be 
ushered into freedom through a New Dispensation ? 

There are in the world a multitude of theologies or re- 
ligious beliefs and systems, all of them containing pueril- 
ities and impossibilities mixed with grand moralities and 
rules of conduct, and all coming up to us from a remote 
antiquity. Mankind make progress in other things and 
give it welcome. But nations are never permitted to see 
that their theologies need changes and improvements to 
adapt them to the new and advanced conditions of society. 
For all these theologies are held to be of divine origin, 
and therefore unimprovable and unchangeable. And yet 
history teems with records of theological innovations which 
took place in opposition to the popular and priestly will, 
but are eventually clung to with as much pertinacity as the 
original belief. And after these changes become estab- 
lished, they are absurdly held to have been caused by some 
divine or supernatural power to carry out the divine inten- 
tions in the perfection of the original theology. 



THEOLOGICAL IDEAS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES. 9 

The unprogressive character of all theologies, so far as 
voluntary improvement is concerned, arises from their 
claims to be original truths, given to man by a personal 
deity, and certified to by violations of natural laws termed 
miracles; and therefore, each theology, having what it 
assumes to be divine truth, promulgated in a supernatural 
manner, brands all its rivals as frauds and impositions. 

The prevailing Christian theology, although based on 
the brotherhood of man, has been a failure for the estab- 
lishment of fraternal relations among mankind. There is, 
and always has been, as much discord and war among 
Christian as pagan nations. Our costly theology is only 
a system of burdensome monopolies, which grow strong 
through the taxation of the churches. Sect opposes sect 
on imaginary dogmas, but all, through their priesthoods, 
are in accord in levying contributions on the people and 
keeping them in mental darkness. 

v Our Christian theology, like all others, has come up to 
us from a remote antiquity, changing all the way to adapt 
itself to the varying conditions of mankind. What is infi- 
delity in one age is good gospel in the next. The masses 
change their creeds as they do their forms of government 
or mode of life. The children deny the authority of the 
fathers to bind them. 

And at this day, here and throughout Europe, indiffer- 
ence and doubt as to the fundamentals of theology are 
pervading the masses everywhere. Science is superseding 
theology. The more advanced priesthood have taken the 
alarm, and are endeavoring to reconcile theology with 
science, after having for ages branded science as an outlaw 
and an enemy to God. Clearly, theology must disappear 
as a special supernatural revelation, and in its place must 
come a natural religion, based on science and reason for its 
facts, and on human requirements, experience and wisdom 
for its morality. 



10 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, was a Hebrew, 
imbued with Mosaical superstitions, and yet a social and 
religious reformer. As a belief in the miraculous and super- 
natural prevailed in his time, as in all preceding ages, his 
whole history is filled with the miraculous. It is impossible 
to discover what he really claimed for himself or how much 
has been substituted by his followers. His teachings are 
fragmentary and confused, arising from the misunderstand- 
ing and original bias of his chroniclers. It is plain, by 
reason and all reliable evidence, that he was only an ordin- 
ary man, the son of a carpenter, and having brothers and 
sisters; that he was poor and despised by the rich, in com- 
mon with poor men everywhere, at all times. The age 
could not then tolerate reforms from an ordinary man and 
a poor man any more than it can now. The miracles con- 
nected with him by his biographers illustrate the theolo- 
gical darkness of the times, and form part of the era of 
Moses. But this age cannot be expected to believe in 
ancient impossibilities more than in modern ones. 

The debasing tendencies of a belief in theology and 
supernaturalism are exhibited in our midst at this time, in 
the advent and growth of what is termed Mormonism. 
The whole Christian world concede this to be a transpar- 
ent fraud. And yet it finds its hundreds of converts, not 
among the enlightened or the scientific, who are capable of 
judgment, but among ignorant and superstitious Christians; 
those who, having already surrendered themselves to the 
supernaturalism connected with their own theology, are just 
in the condition of credulity that is ready to accept any 
other phase of supernaturalism, from witchcraft to Mor- 
monism. 

It is often assumed that the spread of original Christi- 
anity is proof that its miracles and supernaturalism were 
true, because men could not be imposed upon. But the 
rise and spread of Mormonism is fatal to every argument 
in favor of ancient miracles and supernaturalism either in 



THELOGICAL IDEAS A.NXJ SOCIAL PRACTICES. 11 

the time of Moses or Christ; for Mormonism comes among 
us and boasts of its supernatural origin and divine institu- 
tion in an era of newspapers and scientific enlightenment, 
while the other is a product of ancient ignorance, and rests 
solely on tradition. Mormonism gives a fatal blow to ancient 
supernaturalism, for it shows the ease with which credulity 
can be imposed upon, and that the acceptance by the multi- 
tude of this or that absurdity furnishes no proof whatever 
of the genuineness of either miracles or testimony. 

The great bulk of Christian dogmas, and its whole sys- 
tem of sacerdotal observances, lie outside of Christ, and 
have no relation to anything he ever did or said. Even the 
Christian sabbath is an unauthorized change. Take away 
the temples, the priests, the ceremonials, the dogmas and 
creeds of the Christian churches, and leave nothing but 
Christ, the poor carpenter, and his teachings, and the whole 
fabric would tumble into ruins. Shall we leave the churches 
and go back to Christ ? 

Our grand material progress may be said to date from 
the time that the ecclesiastical shackles of ancient Christi- 
anity were thrown off. And the priest of to-day, like his 
predecessors, howls for the crucifixion of all who are strug- 
gling for the elevation of man, and the establishment of 
the underlying Christian idea of fraternity and social 
harmony. Time and progress never reach a priest. 

But age aftei age has progressed in defiance of its men- 
tal bonds and its priestly obstructions. And what are now 
the religious consequences of this material and mental 
progress ? Just what might be expected. Catholicism 
repudiates Judaism as superseded by itself, and denounces 
Protestantism as heresy; while Protestantism repudiates 
Catholicism as anti-Christ, and denounces further mental 
progress as infidelity. Each tries to stay all advance beyond 
itself. But, on all sides, doubts, disputes, and denials are 
openly expressed. There is a general dissatisfaction with 
things as they are. Men instinctively crave something bet- 



12 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

ter and more satisfying than crude speculations and debas- 
ing superstitions. For the first time in the history of the 
world, the advocates of theology consent to argue and 
defend themselves by special pleas, instead of the special 
agency of the prison, the stake and the gibbett. It is a 
hopeful sign for progress. 

Institutions, theologies, and modes of thought are com- 
pelled to change in accordance with the material progress 
of man. Judaism supplanted Egyptian paganism, and the 
paganism has disappeared. Christianity, in its Catholic 
phase, succeeded Grecian paganism and Judaism, and the 
paganism is gone, and the Judaism is going. Christianity, 
in its Protestant phase, is taking the place of the Catholic 
structure, and the latter is left behind, and gradually crumb- 
ling under the light of the press and modern advancement. 
There is a natural and inevitable progress all the way up. 

And so to-day, in this year 1878 of the Christian era, 
Protestantism itself is giving place to the free thought and 
religious unbelief which naturally grow out of it. The. 
right of private judgment is fatal to supernatural theolo- 
gies. Too many facts come in conflict with the fictions. 
The leading Protestant priests are driven to a repudiation 
of the old ideas of heaven and hell, as localities of reward 
and punishment. Immortality itself, deprived of a loca- 
cation, hangs by the thread of early associations. 

Both ancient and modern Christianity are in process of 
dissolution as exponents of the supernatural. The Chris- 
tian virtues are disappearing, and are being supplanted by 
excessive avarice, inordinate selfishness, and social antag- 
onisms. Strife reigns everywhere. There are more outside 
than within the church, while hosts of those within are 
there because of moral cowardice or from selfish interests. 
Are we not in a condition needing social and religious 
reformation ? 

Science and reason having battered down the super- 
natural bulwarks of Christianity, men are coming to ask 



THEOLOGICAL IDEAS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES. 13 

themselves: "Is there really any need for theology or reli- 
gion ?" meaning thereby certain creeds, observances and 
supernatural beliefs ? Science contends that the answer 
must be in the negative. Mankind grow into creeds and 
then grow out of them. 

Shall we abolish our theology, or does it contain 
some fundamental law of morality adapted to modern 
civilization ? The morality of Christianity, which is all 
that society needs, rests on Moses and Christ. The first 
promulgated the ten commandments, which the latter con- 
densed into the love of our neighbors as ourselves, and 
the doing to others as we would have others to do unto us. 
The age is prepared to receive these grand principles on 
their own merits, apart from any theological authority. 
The age also demands freedom from those priestly bonds 
which Moses decreed and which Christ tolerated. 

fc Surely it now requires no priesthood, creeds or religious 
ceremonials as accompaniments to the commandments of 
Moses or the precepts of Christ. Either ought to be capa- 
ble of standing on its own merits. Neither does it require 
an imaginary heaven or hell to reward obedience or punish 
infractions; for to do as we would be done by is a natural 
moral law, and its observance or neglect brings pleasure 
or pain, like other laws. 

While theology, with its accompaniments, is purely arti- 
ficial, religion itself, or the law of goodness, is a very plain 
and simple thing, which "the wayfaring man, though a 
fool," can comprehend. But, bedizened with priestly fic- 
titious accessories and vain imaginings, all the preachings 
and teachings for two thousand years have only tended to 
obscure it and bewilder the mind. 

Religion consists in right action towards others and 
ourselves, judging of what is right to others by placing 
ourselves in their position; in conjunction with a sense of 
harmonious unity with God and man. The morality is the 
action, and the harmony the reward. The one governs the 



14 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

intellect and the other satisfies the heart. It requires 
neither churches, sermons, creeds nor priests. All it needs 
is good conditions and surroundings for mankind, that the 
moral action may be developed and strengthened, and not 
as now, smothered under adverse influences. And all these 
essential conditions lie outside of creeds, priests and 
churches. 

But the hirelings of antiquated theology will not give 
up mankind to progress and scientific enlightenment. The 
priest sees everything else change and improve, but he holds 
on to the prevailing theology as a finality. But if it was 
not a finality as instituted by Moses, why should it be with 
the crucifixion of Christ ? How can the Christian priest of 
to-day reasonably claim a better knowledge of the ulterior 
developments of the Infinite than did the Israelite priest 
two thousand years since? If the record and observances 
of the one was put aside through a New Testament, why 
should not the dogmas and observances connected with the 
other be excluded from a New Dispensation ? Why blame 
the past for its ignorance and obstinacy while to-day fol- 
lowing the same example ? 

To contend for the fixity of any theology is to ignore 
all changes, and to deny the power of the Infinite to im- 
prove mankind through growth and development. Whereas 
the whole records of the race are but details of experi- 
ments and efforts at improvement in theology, government 
and society — all in obedience to the indestructible actu- 
ating principles of our being. The Christian priest con- 
siders Christianity to be the fulfilment of the Judaicai dis- 
pensation; but, if he believes in supernaturalism, why not 
admit that coming changes may be still further ordained 
and necessary expansions? According to Christ, the law 
and the prophets hang on morality. This is the essence of 
ali religion, and theologies are only the bottles that hold it. 

The universal prevalence of theologies is taken to imply 
that man is a " religious animal," and needs theologies to 



THEOLOGICAL IDEAS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES. 15 

supply a natural want. But what man requires and searches 
for is not theology, but knowledge. His theology, what- 
ever it may be, is only the record of his progress in the 
solution of the unknown. 

At this day, the prevailing Christian theology is rotten 
to the core as a supernatural fabric. It has ceased to have 
any effect in public or private life. The priest preaches 
immortality, although at a loss for a location. It is con- 
tended that man craves immortality, and therefore, as it is 
a natural want, there must be something to supply it. But 
the desire for immortality is simply a disinclination to die, 
and is common to all forms of life as well as man. It is 
felt only during the time that it is natural to live. As that 
time draws to an end, age extinguishes the desire for it. 
The deaf and blear-eyed imbecile, with body and mind 
decayed by age, is troubled by no fears of a hereafter 
and elevated by no hopes. He has outlived the desire for 
immortality. 

Although there can be no theological immortality in 
some other sphere, an idea that Christianity has borrowed 
from paganism, yet, in looking at the world of life around 
us, cannot we discover what may be termed a natural im- 
mortality, shared in by all created beings — just such an 
immortality as all of us are suited for, and also one that 
enables man to remedy his errors as he goes along on the 
stream of time? It is the living, and not the dead, who 
have an interest in immortality, and are to be immortal. 

Theology, like science, should rest on principles or facts 
that cannot be controverted. It should be able to withstand 
the fullest examination and criticism, age after age; not 
shut up in a book, to be laboriously and blunderingly trans- 
lated and slowly spread throughout the world, but to rest 
on facts that surround alike the savage and civilised man. 
It should be as plain to the comprehension as heat or cold, 
rain or sunshine. But, from the beginning, all theologies 
have been secretive, cowardly and tyrannical. They have 



16 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

repudiated all examination and discussion and outlawed 
and destroyed all inquirers who appealed to facts. Reason 
is with them a " carnal weapon." It has been one of the 
chief objects of every priesthood to stifle all thought, all 
discussion, all exercise of reason, and compel devotees to 
blindly accept the traditions and usages offered them. 
Everything is allowed to be changed except theology. 

The nature of things, and the principles of creation, are 
the same to-day as in the time of Christ. If what are cal- 
led miracles were performed then, the same things can be 
done now, for God or Nature is the same, and man is the 
same. That they cannot be performed, and that they in- 
volve violations of creative processes for mere trivial and 
local exhibitions to ignorant multitudes, is sufficient proof 
that they never had existence, and that they are only myth- 
ical traditions, such as are always met with among ignor- 
ant and undeveloped populaitons. And the fact that all 
theologies abound in the like miracles, and that they are 
their sole reliance, exhibits a common parentage in the 
ignorance of a remote and semi-barbarous age. And even 
in our own times there yet remains a credulous belief in 
witches, spirits, devils, and other supernatural agencies, 
the result of theological training. 

But this New Age demands constant proofs. Science 
proves as it goes along and theology can do the same if it 
rests on truths. Various forms of being exist around us. 
There must be a cause for their existence and continuance. 
They rest on natural and never on miraculous causes. 
Theology dogmatically assumes to know all about its per- 
sonal God, or the Original Principle, and asserts that God 
did this or that, for this or that purpose, and it requires and 
presents no proof but its puerile and antiquated traditions. 
Science humbly confesses that it has not been able to ap- 
proach God, and does not know how or why he works. But 
at the same time it has abundant evidence that all theology 
rests on gross errors and delusions, and is utterly ignorant 



THEOLOGICAL IDEAS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES. 17 

of God and his laws. Theologies, therefore, must be abol- 
ished, or be made to rest on natural laws or the deductions 
of reason. The days of a blind faith in tradition are pass- 
ing away. 

We live in a glorious world. Everything, so far as 
natural agencies are concerned, is conducted in the best 
possible manner. The more extended our knowledge, the 
greater our wonder and admiration. We behold a universe 
of energies and forces, causes and effects, interconvertible, 
varying their action and manifestations as conditions vary. 
We have discovered how to govern many of these forces, 
and thereby adapt them to our desires or necessities. We 
control them through conditions, as nature does. We no 
longer trust to the prayers of a priest for anything, nor do 
we expect miracles. We are continually pressing natural 
forces into our service, and surpassing all the alleged mir- 
acles of antiquity. The knowledge and conquest of these 
agencies make us demi-gods. We cannot now conceive of 
our ultimate power, nor set bounds to it. Our powers will 
develop as we become qualified to use them, as G-od does, 
for universal humanity. 

Science preaches better sermons than theology. It exhi- 
bits the work of the Creative Power everywhere, and 
shows us some of the processes through which God works. 
There is no occasion to go back to antiquity, for fabulous 
accounts of how he is supposed to have worked in ancient 
times. Science leads towards God by teaching codes of 
physical and moral laws that are indisputable, and which 
tend to make us more perfect and happy men and women; 
far in advance of theological imaginings. 

Nature also, unlike the priest, preaches us a sermon of 
which we are never weary. The ages cannot exhaust the 
subject nor deaden the interest. The Great Wonderful is 
continually before us, by day or night. We have an inex- 
haustible theme for reflection and enjoyment. And the 



18 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

ignorant or enlightened feel a common attraction and a 
ceaseless interest. The religion of science and natural law 
is the only true religion, and the only one adapted to a pro- 
gressive humanity. 

Moses was a necessity for his age and nation, and so 
was Christ, and so was every political, religious, or social 
reformer that ever lived. Such men always appear when 
the world has need of them. All are necessary links in 
the chain of progress. , 

And now, in its turn, this age needs great reformations. 
The world has progressed beyond the " thus saith the 
Lord." Whatever is presented must come from and repre- 
sent the republicanised humanity, science, and progressive 
tendencies of the age. No man or theology can now fet- 
ter the great republic of thought, nor make it tributary 
to the unsubstantial delusions of the past. Science has 
dug down to a rock, on which mankind can now rear im- 
perishable structures. 

We shall have no more "divine lawgivers." What 
every man is, is what his attributes, surroundings and efforts 
have made him. What he does, is what the general ten- 
dencies of things lead him to do. God has not now, and 
never had, any special personal favorites. If some men 
have been and are in advance of others, it is due to a bet- 
ter organisation, better opportunities, and hard work 
through these opportunities. Theology, like science, must ' 
become republicanised. God never had any need of special 
prophets claiming special attributes and powers, with au- 
thority to deal out damnation to doubters. 

The paternity of God and the brotherhood of man is 
claimed to have originated with Chris cianity. Yet their 
social and religious divisions and antagonisms have always 
compelled Christians to lose sight of this fundamental 
principle in their actions, while adopting it as a theory. 
The spirit of fraternity is dead among us. The hand of 
every man is more or less raised against every other man. 



THELOGICAL IDEAS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES. 19 

Society is chaotic; some means must be devised to renew 
and vitalise the spirit and practice of fraternity, or we 
shall enter into a wilderness of anarchy. 

While religion is right action, theology is only the sup- 
positious institution of this action, through a code of 
assumed divine laws, promulgated by a personal Deity. 
Priests attribute all theologies to God, and man must obey 
them without question. But they are wholly the work of 
man. Theology is the assumed divine law, but is not reli- 
gion the right practice? The one is the scaffold, and the 
other the finished structure. Is it necessary to retain our 
ancient theological scaffolds any longer ? Not that the 
great work of human perfection is completed — for it in- 
volves unlimited progression through numberless centuries 
— but is the scaffold of Moses, however essential it may 
have been to the bestial semi-savages of Israel in his day, 
of any use to this age ? Is it not rather a fatal obstruc- 
tion to religious progress, by continually belittling the 
Infinite to the conceptions of the ancient Israelite ? Can 
the modern world compress this Omnipresent Infinite into 
the advising, promising, and changeable Jehovah of 
Moses? And are the ceremonials that constitute our 
church scaffolds of any further use ? Why complain of 
infidelity, when the peurilities of the bible give it so much 
encouragement ? Surely there is a greater and a better 
God than the Jehovah of Moses. 

Its theology is the great obstruction to modern progress. 
It environs man from the cradle to the grave, and leaves 
the marks of its fetters on every one. The same unrelent- 
ing war must be made upon a fabulous theology, as it 
wages against a living thought and science. The priest is 
the only implacable outlaw against reason and common 
sense. All other men may be redeemed, but the priest is a 
hopeless wallower in the mire. As a priest and a theology 
came into the world together, so they must go out together, 
and the days of their delusions are numbered. All reform- 



20 THE PRESENT DISPENSATION. 

ations must commence at a reformation of existing theo- 
logy, in common with social usages. When the theolo- 
gical rubbish of four thousand years is cleared away, then, 
and not until then, will men have room to move and breathe 
freely. Theology is the citadel that has overawed the 
race from the beginning of civilisation, and laid all things 
under tribute. Everywhere we find it as a bold robber or 
a whining beggar. It has always stood in the way of both 
God and man. 

Let mankind for once have a natural religion divested 
of an unnatural theology. 



II 



THE NEW DISPENSATION; 

ITS RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 

'HILE science is compelled to repudiate theo- 
logy, there is no antagonism between science 
/£!*£/ an( i tnat right action which constitutes true 
religion. The two are in natural fraternity, and stand 
upon a common foundation. Science and religion must 
henceforth be as one, representing the physical, the moral 
and the emotional law. Theology must give place to re- 
ligion; for while theology is a useless burden, a broad and 
cosmopolitan religion is a necessity. What shall be the 
foundation for that religion? The Promised Land of 
Moses is the equivalent of the Christian heaven. Neither 
of them have so far been realised. Can science and the 
Nature of things give us realities instead of anticipations ? 




RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 21 

Are our indefinite yearnings for something better to be 
always unsatisfied ? Can we create a Promised Land for 
ourselves ? Have we not been long enough in the wilder- 
ness ? Is God a father and man a brother, or are they 
not something more than this ? 

Let us endeavor to go down to the foundation of 
things. God and his works are as visible to, and as con- 
ceivable by, us as to Moses or any other ancient sage. 
" He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever," and with- 
holds nothing from one generation that he has given to 
another. No vital truths or facts depend upon tradition, 
else there would be injustice to later ages. 

Who, then, and what is God ? Have not the efforts 
of man in all ages been directed to solve this question ? Do 
not the multitude of theologies attest their failure ? And, 
comparing these theologies with each other, what are they 
all but guesses as to the origin of things ? Finite man has 
set himself to comprehend the Infinite, and he has neces- 
sarily failed. The philosopher, equally with the fool, can 
only surmise. Theological gods are but exaggerated men, 
with the thoughts and actions of men; benevolent and 
trusting, yet cruel and jealous; infinite in knowledge, yet 
often deceived; establishing causes and yet finding fault 
with effects; lovingly creating children here and there to 
enjoy life, and yet decreeing their extermination by each 
other. 

Theologies are but horrible caricatures of the Incom- 
prehensible but Infinite Good. 

Where, then, and what is God, so far as finite man can 
approach the mystery from his present standpoint and the 
deductions of reason ? For science and reason, and not 
theology, will henceforth control the world. A basis to 
lest upon lies in: 

1. An ultimate and origial Something, whether we 
term it God or Nature, Spirit or Matter. 



22 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

2. The necessary universality of this Something, God, 
or Original Principle. 

3. The consequent unity and homogeneity of this God, 
or Original Principle, with all things visible and invisible. 

4. The manifestation of this God or Principle through 
a universal paternity, or constant creative outflow of diver- 
sified forms of existence; which are therefore necessarily 
only conditional and varying phases, or visible incarnations 
of the Original Principle. 

5. God and all things being necessarily one, God and 
man are therefore one, and all mankind are one; for all 
men have the like atomic body, with the like identity and 
qualities, diversified by conditions. All are visible incar- 
nations of the same parent. 

6. The body is the visible incarnation, with certain 
faculties and qualities and a conscious identity or "I." 
This identity or inherent attribute which calls itself I, 
forming a component part of or attachment to the body, 
and giving us consciousness of existence, would seem io be 
the invisible and conditional representative of a conscious, 
primary, intelligent existence, whatever we may term it, 
which requires a visible organisation to give it utterance. 
Does not this visible and invisible conscious and intelli- 
gent incarnation constitute Divine Sonship ? 

7. As causation, adaptation or intelligent action is 
witnessed everywhere, this seems analogically to imply 
that every atom of the universe is an intelligent entity, or 
God-representative. For all the intelligence we meet with 
works upwards from the invisible atom to and through vis- 
ible forms. The Universal Principle, or God, in one mani- 
festation, may therefore express a Universal Atomic In- 
telligence. God is alike in the visible and the invisible. 

8. This Original Principle, or God, being necessarily 
infinite in every particular, and consequently inscrutable, 
can only be very imperfectly conceived of by finite beings. 
Therefore every theology, tradition, record or belief which 



BELIGIOTTS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 23 

affects to authoritatively personify this God or Principle, 
give it a specific shape or abode, or to claim special revela- 
tions as to its desires and intentions in regard to man, is 
an incongruous absurdity, having no foundation in facts 
or the nature of things. 

9. The body and associated identity of man or beast 
which disappears to-day, by dissolution, is replaced by a 
new existence continually, through new atomic combina- 
tions and births; and this constant transmission and con- 
tinuation of life and identity constitutes immortality, as 
manifested in individuals, races and organic forms. 

10. Therefore, as man is immortal through continual 
birth, generation after generation, it is the paramount 
duty, as well as the vital interest, of all individuals to 
transmit to themselves perfect bodies and faculties; and 
also to devise and establish the best possible social, indus- 
trial, educational and other conditions and surroundings, 
that every generation may become superior to its prede- 
cessor, physically, morally, intellectually and socially. For 
immortality is here on earth; it is here that we are to ex- 
perience our enjoyments or sufferings, our heaven or hell, 
as living, individual and collective identities, age after age; 
reaping as the sons and daughters what we sowed as the 
parents, whether good or evil. 

While " I and my Father are one " is a truth for all 
time, " I and my neighbor are one " cannot be separated 
from it. 

While some of these principles are self-evident, the 
others are naturally deduced from them. They are not an 
authoritative command, derived from an assumed super- 
natural source, but are a legitimate outgrowth from reason 
and the nature of things, and are in correspondence with 
scientific truths and an enlightened religious idea; not 
presuming to specify what God is, but what are his ref- 
lations with man. It is a natural and indisputable God 



24 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

that this age demands, in place of the supernatural and 
traditional deity imagined in the boyhood of the race. It 
needs no tradition to tell us that. 

" 1. There is an ultimate and original Something, whether we 
term it God or Nature, Spirit or Matter." 

This is a self-evident truth. It is impossible to con- 
ceive of any other condition of things, or how something 
could come from nothing. There is what may be termed 
infinite place or space, and it is peopled with moving 
bodies with different properties, and in various stages of 
development. These bodies are controlled by certain con- 
ditions or principles. These bodies are something, and 
they exist in a place or space. This space being infinite 
in extent, there was nothing outside of it from which they 
could have come, therefore their constituents have always 
existed in one form or another. But plainly they are not 
the ultimate invisible Something, but only a visible mani- 
festation of its existence, coming into view conditionally, 
through creative action or outflow during incomprehensible 
periods of time. The ultimate something is within them 
and around them. They are the visible finite Something 
coming out of the invisible Infinite Something. There are 
not two Somethings, but one, made manifest to man in a 
finite sense, or as a finite part of the Infinite Whole. 

"2. The necessary universality of this Something, God, or 
Original Principle." 

If any part of the universe was without the Original 

Principle, or God, this principle would not be omnipresent, 

as it necessarily must be. It is everywhere. An ultimate 

Something implies its universality. There cannot be two 

ultimate Somethings, nor a Something and a Nothing, for 

two things cannot be in the same place at the same time. 

We cannot even in thought go to a locality or survey an 

object that is destitute of this Something. Body and space 

are alike its manifestations everywhere. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 25 

Is it not plain that the Infinite Something, that neces- 
sarily fills the universe, never could compress itself into 
the form of a man, and talk to Moses, as is affirmed by a 
supernatural and superannuated theology ? It can never 
be anything but infinite and omnipresent. It is not a being 
that can leave one place and go to another. It is an In- 
finite Totality, in all places at all times. 

"3. The consequent unity and homogeneity of this God or 
Principle with all things, visible and invisible." 

We can separate a man from his works, but we cannot 
separate an Omnipresent God or Original Principle from 
its visible manifestations. This separation would imply 
that there was something that was not God — a common 
belief, derived from theology, but utterly untenable in 
relation to a Universal Principle. All secondary causes 
are but continuations or outgrowths from the First Cause. 
Our finite and limited powers compel us to entertain con- 
fused ideas of what is infinite, and its connection with the 
finite, but an Infinite, Primary, Omnipresent Cause cannot 
be separated from anything that flows from it. 

Theology imagines God as a being distinct from his 
works, instituting laws and modes of action for the gov- 
ernment of things outside of himself, thereby destroying 
his infinity and omnipresence, and making him one among 
many; whereas there is no escape from God. He permeates 
everything and comprises everything. The Everything 
constitues the universal homogeneous God. 

We view human beings, animals, vegetables and min- 
erals, and seeing no visible connection between these things, 
we consider them as having no relation with each other. 
But dissection and analysis show us homogeneity in their 
respective constituents, and that in reality they are formed 
of the same elements under different manifestations. And 
within one apparent element lie others, going back until 
disappearing from all cognisance. Yet necessarily they 
are all manifestations of the First Cause, which, while in- 



26 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

scrutable itself, cannot, from its omnipresent nature, be 
separated from its manifestations. An inexorable logic 
carries us back to a primary and universal homogenity, 
term it what we will. One God, one Power, one Original 
Principle, underlies all things. There cannot . be a multi- 
tude of Gods, Powers, or Original Principles, else there 
would be contradictions, confusions, and destructive inhar- 
monies. 

"4. The manifestations of this Principle through a universal 
paternity, or constant creative outflow of diversified forms of exist- 
ence ; which are necessarily but conditional and varying phases or 
visible incarnations of the Original Principle." 

The God, or Original Principle, being infinite in every 
respect, is utterly beyond the cognisance of finite beings, 
except through its manifestations. This God is not an 
architect, working with inert matter, as theology supposes, 
for inert matter and a universal being or principle cannot 
exist at the same time. This Original Principle is parental, 
projective or procreative, constantly displaying itself in 
visible forms. Truly, Christ was a child of this universal 
parent, and so is every human being, as well as all the 
diversified forms of animal and insect life. All are visible 
incarnations of the Great Parent. It is not possible for 
us to be anything else, nor for us to exist apart from and 
independent of God, as theology imagines. We are all 
begotten through atomic and elemental unities, and vary 
as our conditions vary. These diversified conditions change 
the products, making mineral, vegetable or animal bodies. 
Underlying all is a common parent and the like materials. 
We are all of God and God. 

" 5. God and all things being necessarily one, God and man 
are therefore one, and all mankind are one; for all men have 
the like atomic body, with the like identity and qualities, diver- 
8 ified by conditions. All are visible incarnations of the same 
parent." 

A Universal Primary Principle cannot admit of any- 
thing exterior to itself. Whatever is, is necessarily a 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 27 

part of that principle. God and man are, therefore, pri- 
marily one, and all men are one as visible incarnations of 
God. If the light from a screened lamp shine through 
fifty openings, does the light belong to the flame in the 
lamp or to the openings ? Can the little orifices say: " It 
is my light ?" All incarnations or existences are but like 
so many openings or mediums through which is exhibited 
the primary and Original Light, and having no innate 
light of themselves. They are conditional manifestations 
of Divinity. We can only approach God through his 
visible incarnations; and everything that we have cognis- 
ance of exhibits just so much of God as we can compre- 
hend, or as he could reveal under the conditions in which 
he worked. There is one God, one universal incarnated 
Sonship, one universal brotherhood of humanity. 

And in the future, as in past ages, the Everlasting 
Parent will bring into view new and more perfect manifesta- 
tions and forms of being, as the proper conditions become 
more developed. Man is the first being on earth that 
arrived at any conception of God, and it required almost 
an eternity to prepare a place for him and develop in him 
the first rude conceptions of Divinity. And all this time 
the Original Parent was constantly at work, in embryotic 
preparations and crude entities; and man, instead of being 
the, finished product and end of God's work on earth, is 
only a step to further and higher developments. 

" 6. The body is the visible incarnation, with certain faculties 
and qualities, and a conscious identity or ' I. ' This identity or in- 
herent attribute which calls itself ' I,' forming a component part of, 
or attachment to, the body, and giving us consciousness of exist- 
ence, would seem to be the invisible and conditional representative 
of a Conscious Primary Intelligent Existence, whatever we may 
term it, which requires a visible organisation to give it utterance. 
Does not this visible and invisible conscious and intelligent incar- 
nation constitute Divine Sonship ?" 

Bodies are indispensable as generators of, and recep- 
tacles for, qualities. The " I " that thinks, feels and acts 



28 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

is a product of the body, in common with its other products, 
and is given to animals as well as man. Destroy the 
body, and, like any other machine, its qualities and attri 
butes are necessarily destroyed with it. If attributes 
could exist without bodies, bodies would never have been 
created, for God does nothing in vain. 

Whatever attributes we have, bodily or mental, are 
the products of convertible forces without us and within 
us. The higher and more etherial qualities are only trans- 
mutations of those more gross. When the body disappears, 
all its qualities necessarily go with it. 

" I exist," exclaims man. Here is my body, with its con- 
stituents and qualities. All that is within me and forms 
part of me is mine. Yain illusion, it is not mine for an 
instant. Nothing is mine "but the identity, and what is 
identity but a consciousness of existence, attached to the 
body for the time being, like its heat and other qualities ? 
In what does my identity differ from that of my neighbor, 
except in its recollections and experiences ? As our bodies 
are incarnations of a Primary Principle, what can we call 
our identities but representatives of a Primary Identity ? 
The most minute organisation has its identity, or conscious- 
ness of existence, for, without this, existence would be a 
blank. The identity is an essential part of the body, and 
can no more exist without body than animal heat can. , 

" 7. As causation, adaptation or intelligent action is witnessed 
everywhere, this seems analogically to imply that every atom of the 
universe is an intelligent entity or God-representative. For all the 
intelligence we meet with wbrks upwards from the invisible atom 
to and through visible forms. The Universal Principle, or God, in 
one manifestation, may, therefore express a Universal Atomic 
Intelligence. God is alike in the visible and invisible." 

The prevailing notion of a Personal Deity, separated 
from his works, and superintending them, is a delusion 
derived from the actions of man; for there are many men, 
and they control each other, and are outside of their works. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 29 

But God and his works are necessarily a unity, for there 
is nothing but God. We speak of natural laws and pro- 
cesses, but underlying all these is infinite atomic intelli- 
gence, and laws are but the modes in which it works. It 
constructs the foetus, ushers us into life, builds up our bodies, 
heals our wounds or broken bones. There can be no such 
thing as inert and unintelligent matter. The whole uni- 
verse contains no visible forms that are not a product of 
this Primary Atomic Intelligence. It is at work every- 
where unceasingly, without beginning or end. The very 
foundations of the earth, which seems to be inert masses 
of rock, have had their periods of creative activity and 
are silently passing through, and preparing for, other 
changes, with not an intelligent atom in the universe. 

What is intelligence but the power to think, to compre- 
hend, to see the relation between effect and cause, and the 
choice of the best possible action under every circum- 
stance ? The more we look into the nature of things the 
more intelligent action do we behold. Such a thing as 
fortuitous action or blind chance cannot be met with. 
Everything in creative action displays intelligence, not only 
for present contingencies, but for the future developments 
to grow out of them. There is no finished universe and a 
resting God, as theology supposes. Constant action and 
infinite progression marks everything. Every solar sys- 
tem and planet that comes into existence requires an eter- 
nity of intelligent atomic action to found and rear it as 
well as to dissipate and re-create it. 

And this Universal Intelligence produces worlds pre- 
cisely fitted for certain organisms, and generates the or- 
ganisms to inhabit it. Looking superficially at the vast 
destructions of life, we are apt to think that it might have 
been avoided. But the very principle of creation hangs on 
the making of something out of something that existed 
before. The dead Old furnishes nutriment for the liviag 
New. Immortality is never lost sight of. There is no 



30 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

transmission of an expiring personality into a new body, 
retaining its old feelings and memories in a supernatural 
heaven, but there is a new body and a new personality 
constantly coming into view here, through generation. It 
is necessary for all things to die that they may live. 

An unintelligent Cause could not conceive of nor 
create intelligence, nor act intelligently; nor could a trail 
sient Cause establish immortality v An immortality found- 
ed on transmission and re-creation is the only immortality 
possible. God fills the universe, and the immortality of 
God himself is exhibited in constant changes and trans- 
mutations. 

The Mosaic account of creation is such as might be 
expected from the age in which it was written. Moses 
supposed that the work of creation ended with the advent 
of man. " God worked six days and rested on the 
seventh." God never rests. To rest for one moment 
would be everlasting death to the universe. It would be 
a stoppage of all the forces and causes of creation. God 
and his works would sink into dissolution, like a body with 
every vital power destroyed. 

We do not know what an atom is any more than we 
know what God is. The term is used to signify that in- 
visible Something which lays the foundations for and 
builds up all visible things. It is useless to speak of and 
divide things into "spirit" and " matter," when we know 
not what either is, and cannot separate the one from the 
other, nor determine their mode of action. It is clear that 
there is universal intelligence, and that it works upwards 
from the invisible into visible forms and forces. God is 
in the invisible atom, whatever it may be. These atoms 
create and maintain man and other organisations. Their 
manifestations show that they are necessarily intelligent 
of themselves, and give rise to other intelligences in or- 
ganic forms. Man is an intelligent whole, composed of 
intelligent atomic parts. Therefore, while it is certain 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 31 

that there is infinite God-like intelligence in the atom, it 
may be, as is the case with man, that there is another in- 
telligence connected with and proceeding from the totality 
of all things — an Infinite resulting Intelligent Whole — 
just as man is an intelligent entity or finished human pro- 
duct of intelligent atomic action. There may be an infinite 
body and an Infinite resultant Identity. As there seems 
to be a universal institution of two sexes for creative pur- 
poses, there may be an infinite dual sex, through which all 
visible manifestations come into view. But all mere sur- 
mises of the finite can establish nothing as to the character 
of the Unknown Infinite. 

"8. This Original Principle, or God, being necessarily infinite 
in every particular, and consequently inscrutable, can only be very 
imperfectly conceived of by finite beings. Therefore every theo- 
logy, tradition, record or belief which affects to authoritatively 
personify this God or Principle, give it a specific shape or abode, or 
to claim special revelations as to its desires and intentions in regard 
to man, is an incongruous absurdity, having no foundation in facts 
or the nature of things." 

All theologies claim to know what God is, and to have 
received certain revelations from him, which are to believed 
under pains and penalties. Yet the devotees of one theo- 
logy reject and repudiate another without fear or scruple. 
This is a tacit admission that records lie or priests lie. God 
did, or did not, give to these peoples their theologies. Did 
he give to all or only one? And to which did he give? 
What special claim has one race or one theology over 
another, as all rest on one assumed foundation from God? 
Has one any better proofs than another, and do not all these 
supposed proofs rest in a remote antiquity, beyond exam- 
ination or verification ? 

Although we cannot know God, nor set bounds to what 
he will do, yet our knowledge of natural laws or processes 
demonstrate clearly what he cannot do. There is no pos- 
sibility of the Universal Principle shutting itself up in any 
form or any earthly locality. The part cannot contain the 



32 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

whole. We cannot go back to the origin of theologies, 
nor is it necessary. We know that God works through 
the same processes in all ages, and gives all ages the same 
evidence, whether they are able to receive it or not. All 
his revelations are universal and never special. 

It matters not whether the founders of ancient theolo- 
gies were deceived themselves, or sought to deceive others, 
or whether their original teachings have been obscured 
through vulgar traditions coming down to us through 
ignorant transcribers. Their theologies are of no more 
value to the present age than their crude processes of 
of manufacture and transportation. We have outgrown 
and progressed beyond them in every respect. 

The prevailing Christian theology, with its superna- 
tural begetting of One Son of God, from a virgin, is of 
the same absurd and unreliable character as the ancient 
theologies, and entitled to no more credence. It is but a 
partial and imperfect statement of the great truth of the 
Universal Sonship of Man, obscured by special and impos- 
sible conditions. It was the product of a semi-barbarous 
people and age. Intercourse with the ignorant will con- 
tinually demonstrate their unreliability in matters even of 
every-day occurence. It seems impossible for them to 
state a case as it is; and this, not from intentional fraud, 
but intellectual feebleness, and incapacity to separate the 
real from the imaginary. 

" 9. The body and associated identity of man or beast which 
disappears to-day, by dissolution, is replaced by a new existence 
continually, through new atomic combinations and births ; and this 
constant transmission and continuation of life and identity consti- 
tutes immortality, as manifested in individuals, races and organic 
forms." 

The idea of immortality is very ancient, and is an out- 
growth from natural intuitions. Mankind have always 
been in search of better surroundings and conditions, 
moved by their progressive impulses; and, having dim 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 33 

intuitions of immortality, invented a promised land, or 
a fictitious abode beyond the skies, which imagination 
furnished with everything desirable. Neither the present 
world nor the present body was satisfactory, therefore an 
imaginary body was invented to correspond with the ima- 
ginary heaven. Every Christian wishes and hopes to be 
himself in a distant heaven, with everything left out which 
really makes himself. Every race has its particular heaven 
and accompanying enjoyments, in correspondence with its 
habits and development. But modern science and discov- 
ery has destroyed one heaven after another, until even the 
advanced Christian has progressed into doubt. He holds 
on to his heaven by the single thread of early associations. 
Preferring existence to annihilation, he has recourse to 
vain hopes and unsubstantial imaginings. 

The Christian theology dooms the majority of man- 
kind to everlasting punishment, because of their disbelief 
in or ignorance of its tenets. Its heaven was specially for 
believers and death-bed repenting law-breakers. All these 
imaginary heavens may be compared to " spiritual " lum- 
ber-rooms, invented to stow away the ignorant and unde- 
veloped masses of humanity belonging to past and future 
ages. For the first man was as immortal as those that 
came after him, and as much entitled to a heaven. 

But God has a better way for securing immortality to 
man. The race is immortal here on earth, and has power 
to improve itself generation after generation. Neither 
God nor man has any need for the accumulated human 
rubbish of undeveloped ages. We are all constantly re- 
organised and transformed into new bodies and identities, 
to whom all ages are alike, for there is an everlasting Pres- 
ent. It is always to-day. To-morrow we never reach. 

No supernatural heaven has yet been imagined which 
would satisfy the ordinary human being for a month. Be- 
cause he is created and fitted for this world, and no other 
place; and if death takes away all that makes him man, 



34 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

and bestows something that makes him an " angel," be 
that angel whatever he imagines, it is simply a new crea- 
tion. It would not be the man but the angel that is im- 
mortal. 

Christian, in common with pagan, immortality has no 
foundation to stand upon. Constant change and recon- 
struction is the universal law. There is no such thing as 
fixity. There is not only no jolace for such a heaven as 
theology imagines, but no necessity for a heavenly immor- 
tality. All existence is fitted for the sphere in which it 
has been placed, and we have no experiences in this world 
that can qualify us for another or change our nature. 

Man has existed from a remote antiquity, and he exists 
to-day. All the way up these centuries he has varied his 
surroundings, his theologies, and his forms of government. 
The human race has never perished. What more can we 
want of immortality ? It is " I " that has come along with 
the centuries. What is it that is born into the world ? 
A form of being termed man or animal, with an identity. 
Nothing new is created. It is simply a re-organisation of 
existing elements. The races of to-day are formed from 
the races of yesterday. A child comes into the world, 
derived from parental elements. Is it a new creation ? 
Certainly not. It is but a continuation and projection for- 
ward of father and mother. It is the old, working under 
new conditions. And this alone constitues immortality. 

It requires so many months to build up a child ready to 
be born, as well as many years to ripen the parents for 
propagation. The child enters independent life, and from 
month to month changes and increases in size, developing 
bodily and mental faculties. Every day there is an income 
of new materials and an outgo of those unnecessary. At 
the end of a year there is none of the original child re- 
maining. And day after day the child vanishes and be- 
comes a man or woman. Look back ! Where is the infant 
that you fondled ? Gone ! Where the little boy or girl, 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 35 

the youth or maiden, that developed from that infant ? 
Gone ! They died and were buried by atoms, and disap- 
peared long years ago. And now the representative of 
that infant and youth is a decrepit man or woman. It 
calls itself John, or any other name, but it has passed 
through continual changes, and those who knew it in some 
phases do not recognise it in others. How should they, 
when it has been re-created so many" times ? 

What is it that makes the man or woman still cling 
to the original name, and declare itself the original crea- 
tion, after it has died or changed atomically so many 
times ? Nothing but its memories. Take away the mem- 
ories and one identity does not differ from another, for we 
are all unstable atomic structures, constantly intermixed, 
built and rebuilt out of each other. 

Immortality is continued existence. Man, in his four- 
score years, is an epitome of the progress and immortality 
of the race. He has passed through a multitude of phases. 
His origin and infancy are to him buried in obscurity. If 
his childhood and youth vanished, what chance theologic- 
ally for the immortality of his old age ? What is it that 
the Christian believes will be immortal ? Ail that formed 
this venerable John has been scattered to the winds little 
by little for four-score years and four-score times. Shall 
that decrepit body and infantile mind inherit the immor- 
tality expected and desired by the Christian? If this is 
unsatisfactory, what phase of his being would he chose for 
immortality ? As well expect to eat again the good din- 
ner he ate fifty years since. The body goes where ancient 
races have gone, to the earth from whence it came. Is it 
the " soul " you would have endure ? That soul is " I," 
and it is always in the living, constantly projected forward 
through generation, and always here. 

Although John has disappeared, he yet lives in his 
children. His instincts perpetuated his identity in them. 
They differ from him only as circumstances and surround- 



36 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

ings have made them vary. There is the same " I am." 
It is an immortal attachment to changeable and perishable 
bodies, but has no existance apart from body. " I " have 
endured through all time, but not John himself. "I" 
is but a ray of the Original Light, connected with and 
shining through a visible organisation. It has power to 
perpetuate itself, generation after generation. Therefore 
John, under various names and forms, exists for ages. The 
identity connected with him is immortal. And the same 
"I " and the like immortality, appertains to every organis- 
ation. One identity, as such, has no pre-eminence above 
another, for identity itself is only consciousness of exist- 
ence, and consciousness of existence is all that we desire to 
be immortal. And it passes by generation through all 
the ages, and is attached to all living forms. 

John, at the age of ten years, differs from himself at 
the age of five as much as he differs from other children 
around him. There is not a particle in the one John that 
belonged to the other. John is not himself for a day. 
New elements are added to and taken away at every mo- 
ment. And yet John instinctively clings to his body for 
the time being as part of his identity, because without 
body there can be no identity. But there is no essential 
difference in the constituents of one body and another, and 
no difference in the identity attached to them, any more 
than there is in the electricity connected with different 
batteries. Our recollections are all by which we can know 
ourselves. So really there is a universal atomic homogen- 
ity of body and a homogeneity of identity as such. The 
like principles permeate all. All men are one, and God 
and man are one. The very conditions of existence mix 
us with each other continually. There is no room for 
pride or exclusiveness. We are all John, under varying 
conditions. All "I," with nothing but memories to dis- 
tinguish us. All God, under crude and imperfect mani- 
festations. 






RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 37 

How is it that we love our children above all others ? 
Because the preservation and continuation of an immortal 
identity is secured by our procreative and parental instincts. 
A child comes to us, and we love it and make all sacrifices 
for it. Why? To perpetuate our identity. We should 
feel the same love for any other child in the place of ours, 
if we did not know the difference. What a heaven of love 
we shall enjoy when we realise and act upon the idea that 
all children are ours — the same flesh and blood, with the 
like identity and qualities ! 

"10. Therefore, as man is immortal through continual birth, 
generation after generation, it is the paramount duty, as well as 
the vital interest of all individuals, to transmit to themselves per- 
fect bodies and faculties ; and also to devise and establish the best 
possible social, industrial, educational and other conditions and sur- 
roundings, that every generation may become superior to its pre- 
decessor, physically, morally, intellectually and socially. For im- 
mortality is here on earth; it is here that we are to experience our 
enjoyments or sufferings, our heaven or hell, as living individual 
and collective identities, age after age; reaping as the sons and 
daughters what we sowed as the parents, whether good or evil." 

With a natural unity between God and man, and man 
with man, why should there exist unnatural and artificial 
social and religious antagonisms? For all human antag- 
onisms are unnatural and artificial, and arise from inappro- 
priate conditions and surroundings. These antagonisms, 
individual and national, have existed from the remotest 
times, because men carry with them into civilisation the 
same tendencies which while savages, are essential to their 
existence. No theology or form of government has ever 
created or maintained domestic or national peace. Why ? 

The causes of quarrels lie in opposing interests. Cer- 
tain essentials are necessary to the maintenance and enjoy- 
ment of life, and these being naturally in limited supply, 
and only to be had through labor or robbery, men dispute 
as to the possession of them. Existing civilisation, with 
its labor-saving appliances, has iucreased the supply, but 



38 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

through "usury" and misdirected "profits," has drawn 
the surplus into specific channels, thereby creating and 
maintaining antagonistic classes and interests. So far, an 
imperfect Christian civilisation has not tended to peace, 
for there is more wrong, suffering, robbery and hatred in 
civilised than in savage life. And its theology itself, 
ostensibly an element of peace, teems with antagonisms, 
and its record is one of blood-thirsty vindictiveness and 
cruel oppressiou. 

What modern civilisation must have is social harmony, 
based on unitary interests and a unitary religious idea. 
The unity of God with man, and man with man, furnishes 
a basis for a religion and a social order that can have no 
antagonisms, and no diversity of interests, while it is an 
incentive to the highest moral action. But even this great 
principle will be powerless unless accompanied by a social 
system in correspondence with it. The social system must 
be as unitary as the religious idea itself, and serve as a 
superstructure for the maintenance of the religion and its 
universal exercise in action. 

Analysing society, civilised and semi civilised, we find 
it divided into classes, representing rich and poor, employ- 
ers and employed; those with abundance and those on the 
point of starvation. And we also discover that it is the 
workers, the most useful of all, that are in the worst posi- 
tion. These social antagonisms are a bar to all religious 
harmony or fraternal feeling, for every man is more or less 
in enmity and antagonism with every other man. 

If these social divisions were natural under all circum-. 
stances, there would be no hope for anything but revolu- 
tions and destructive outbreaks. But they are purely arti- 
ficial, and can be remedied and re-adjusted without wrong. 
The co-operation of any number of men, all working for 
a common object, and sharing the results of their labor 
in common, has in numerous cases given proof that social 
divisions were unnecessary and prejudicial. General co- 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 39 

operation furnishes the means for a re-adjustment of the 
social forces, for co-operation can do all that isolated 
action can do, and accomplish greater results at less waste. 
Our system of government itself is based on political co- 
operation, and must be supplemented by industrial co-oper- 
ation, or it will retrograde under adverse influences. 

Education, imperfect as it is, has stirred up thought 
everywhere, while the pressure of poverty incites to re- 
bellious action everywhere. Capital and labor must come 
together as a unit, and work harmoniously and equit- 
ably, or capital must run its risks of forcible disruptions 
and vast destructions. There is no other alternative. 
Labor is at the limit of endurance to the heartless de- 
mands of an arrogant and anti-republican capital. There 
is chronic war on all sides. No form of faith can prevent 
a rupture so long as present social relations are maintained. 

As the necessities of the age demand and will have a 
new Social and Religious Dispensation, as a step to further 
material and religious progress; and as no one can deter- 
mine how or when it shall take place; we ought to prepare 
for it by considering the principles and practices that are 
the most efficacious in the production of wealth and the 
most equitable in its distribution. For we ought to pro- 
gress from the Old into the New by peaceful steps if 
possible. 

There are some among us who look to Christianity 
alone for the adjustment of all difficulties. But Christi- 
anity in its present and past phases has been a failure, be- 
cause it has been environed by the same fatal social con- 
ditions, and burdened with revolting creeds and childish 
superstitions. It has belittled God in a vain attempt to 
elevate a special humanity, but it most now expand into 
the broader idea of a unitary humanity inseparable from 
God. 

From the absence of favorable social conditions, Chris- 
tianity, notwithstanding its peace principles, has never 



40 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

been able to prevent wars, or industrial disturbances, or 
general distress. It has never had power or desire to con- 
trol social evils that ought to have been prevented, nor 
to institute such social conditions as were in accord with 
its leading idea of equity and harmony, or else it has, 
through its priestly leaders, been faithless to its principles. 
Whereas, true religion, or right action, should permeate 
every institution and impress its character everywhere. 
There must be no opposition between religious principles 
and material interests, or the interests will push the reli- 
gion aside. The whole social structure should be in cor- 
respondence with its religious idea, and then religion and 
action will be synonymous. An equalitarian Christianity 
has been smothered under social inequalities. 

In the New Era, the common unity of humanity must 
be brought into action by a general union of societary in- 
terests. The universal unity cannot admit of hostile 
classes and social antagonisms. Its equalitarian principles 
must pervade every department of society and every phase 
of industry. It can know nothing of superior or inferior 
in respect to rights or social position. 

No man nor church can set bounds to progress, nor in- 
stitute usages suitable for all time. Every generation 
must be left free to discuss, modify or change an existing 
status. For progress is perpetual, and humanity and its 
institutions must advance together. But the great effort 
of Christianity in all ages, as personified by its priests 
and ecclesiastical powers, has been to prevent progress in 
any direction. It has defended every species of slavery. 
It has anathematised science and persecuted its votaries. 
It has denounced all religious investigation and reform. 
It has spared no cruelties and known nothing of mercy 
or remorse. And to-day, shorn of its power to oppress, it 
is dumb in respect to social justice, or arrayed on the 
side of the oppressor. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL EEQUIREMENTS. 41 

All religious history seems mainly a record of a church 
and its votaries to show the world how little religion they 
had in action, and how little they knew of its underlying 
principles. Instead of exhibiting humanity elevated and 
beatified by contact with God, it has shown only humanity 
clothed in the attributes of the tiger and the wolf, and 
feasting on the blood of the best men of all ages. 

The special privileges of kings, aristocracies and 
^churches have been the bane of the world in all times. 
In the United States, these privileges have been abro- 
gated only in name. The man of money is distinguished 
from the man of labor. He is the representative of the 
king, the aristocrat and the church. He grows fat through 
the spoliation of labor by profit and usury, and strong 
through the legislation which a servile and dependent 
labor permits him to control. He is an alien from Chris- 
tianity in spirit and practice. The brotherhood of human- 
ity is to him a myth or a pious fraud. 

There is no inherent betterness or worseness in any class. 
Each is what its conditions and surroundings make it. As 
s and their vices and antagonisms grow out of con- 
ditions, the overthrow and destruction of the rich, and 
their replacement by the poor would remedy nothing. It 
would only be a change of tyrannies. One class and one 
common unitary interest, social and religious, is the only 
remedy for social wrongs and abuses. 

Men brought together in material union are nearer to 
spiritual and religious union. The removal of one antag- 
onism prepares the way to destroy others. Universal co- 
operation for the material welfare of all is only one step 
from the religious co-operation and union of all. But 
class divisions are fatal to true religious union. Where 
one man is dependent on another for work and bread, he 
is in social serfdom, and his serf status follows him even 
into the church. His inferiority is impressed upon him 
everywhere. 



42 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

Rich men were denounced by Christ, and they have 
suffered in all ages through convulsions and revolutions. 
But the condition of the masses was never improved by 
any of these changes, for they never changed the social 
status of labor, nor gave it industrial liberty. 

It is a law of nature that man shall earn his living by 
the sweat of his brow, and this should never be set aside 
by artificial distinctions and usages. The unjust distribu- 
tion of the products of labor creates and maintains rival 
classes in perpetuity. And an " upper," wealthy and idle 
class is always supported at the expense of a "lower" 
and industrious poor one. For all wealth comes from 
labor, those who do neither head work nor hand work are 
a burden to those who toil, and the greater their wealth 
thj»^i-eater the burden and wrong. 

' If five millions of men working for wages earn twenty 
dollars a week each, there is a hundred millions of wealth 
created every week. If, through profits, interest or usury, 
and other fictitious claims, capital, represented by the em- 
ploying class and money lenders, appropriates half the 
value created, and pays each worker only ten dollars for 
what is worth twenty, the workers are weekly defrauded 
of fifty millions of dollars. This system forms the basis 
of all trade, and by it the capitalist classes are enabled to 
maintain their supremacy and luxurious surroundings. 
Through this plunder of labor, capital builds palaces for 
dwellings and palaces to contain its goods, while the im- 
poverished and defrauded workman knows not where to 
lay his head. Every city is filled with these accumulations, 
derived from the toils of the farmer and wage-workers. 
Every railroad, city, mine and factory represents the with- 
held earnings of labor, while the toilers themselves are on 
the verge of beggary. 

No mere political changes or revolutions can remedy 
inherent social evils. No such change has ever interfered 
with the right of one class to hold another in industrial 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 43 

servitude, and draw profit and usury from it. It has never 
been attempted to change the relations between capital 
and labor, or relieve labor from bondage, or establish an 
equitable system of production and distribution. There- 

• fore, it matters not whether a government be termed re- 
publican or monarchical, for labor suffers the same social 
disabilities and losses under each form. 

The universal organisation of labor and capital on some 
co-operative basis under popular control, supplied with 
the necessary currency representing time employed in 

♦ labor, furnishing constant work and abundant wages, 
creating and equitably distributing products of all kinds, 
must be looked to as a remedy for every social wrong and 
robbery. 

No one outside of the wages-classes can have an ade- 
quate idea of the sufferings and sacrifices of men and 
L women wage-workers in times of low wages and scarcity 
of employment. It leads to drunkenness, theft, prostitu- 
tion, and every other abuse of humanity. It tends to em- 
brute whole populations and destroy all moral impulses. 
What can be expected of classes chained down to the 
lowest and most debasing conditions of humanity ? The 
home is as a dungeon and the workshop as a orison, and 
' capital holds the key of both. 

We read of the blood-thirsty ferocity displayed at the 
French Revolution. The same traits will be found in all 
peoples, under the like conditions of poverty and tyranny, 
produced by classes and class governments appropriating all 
that is created. The same spirit of hatred is among us to- 
day, and spreading rapidly in all directions. Force some- 
times temporarily suppresses outbreaks, but is it not bet- 
ter to repress them by the higher sentiments and feelings 
that grow out of improved conditions? 

The New Social and Religious Dispensation does not 
come to destroy capital nor plunder industry. Its mis- 
sion is to rectify and not establish abuses. Work and 



44 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

wages must be assured under all contingencies, for these 
lie at the foundation of all national and individual wealth 
and advancement. It will take away from ruling classes 
all opportunity or excuse for the plunder of labor. 

A common material interest serves as a bond of union » 
in a certain degree, but experience shows that other forms 
of union are more binding and self-sacrificing. Members 
of a business partnership are satisfied if each has his share. 
There is no inducement for one to give anything to another. 
But men and women are ready to make great sacrifices as 
lovers or parents. Humanity can be moved by powerful ^ 
internal influences that do not regard profit or loss. A 
man and woman may feel alone in the world, but they 
come together and love, and each has something to live 
for. Children are born to them, and add to the love 
and enjoyments. Outside family attachments are formed 
among neighbors and relatives, and the circle of love is 
indefinitely extended. Kemove antagonisms in interest, 
personal and religious, and it is the tendency of love to 
grow and adhere to all it comes in contact with. 

And this tendency will constantly increase as we come 
to realise that every person is only ourselves under differ- 
ent conditions — the like body and identity, with the same 
capacity for love and friendly intercourse — an incarnation 
of the same God. 

Our attachments are now guided mainly by accident. 
A couple marry and the relatives of each belong to the 
" family." The choice of other partners would have allied 
them with other families, and guided their sympathies in 
another direction. They would have had the same love 
for the one family as they now have for the other. All 
these attachments, being conditional, prove conclusively 
that mankind are capable of universal love under the 
proper expanded conditions. Our class divisions, opposing 
interests, or the proscriptive customs of the world keep us 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 45 

isolated when we yearn for friendly communion. Let us 
so widen our sympathies and intercourse that every human 
being is a member of the " family." 

But antagonism of interests is the bane of all religion 
and religious action and social fraternity. It generates 
within us "the world, the flesh and the devil." It withers 
the affinities and loves that are ready to blossom and scat- 
ter perfume. It binds us in a groveling selfishness. We 
forget unity and fraternity, and self-interest is the idol to 
be ministered to. Therefore is it essential that we should 
be placed in conditions favorable to the development of 
our highest faculties and purest enjoyments. Love and 
friendship are capable of infinite expansion, and their grati- 
fications are the greatest and most satisfactory. The 
more love is expanded, and the greater its scope, the more 
intense and continuous our pleasures. 

The grand exhortation to " love our neighbor as our- 
selves" is impossible of fulfilment when that neighbor 
occupies the position of a tyrant or a plunderer. The key 
that unlocks the mystery why a man should love his neigh- 
bor as himself, is found in the fact that his neighbor is 
himself, under different conditions. This great truth un- 
derlies the whole fabric of the New Dispensation, and 
suggests what ought to be done. There must be no more 
tyranny and robbery. The tyrant unknowingly tortures 
and abuses himself. An identity suffers, and that identity 
is in divine relationship with all other identities. 

Therefore, not precepts, nor a dry sense of duty can 
remedy social evils. The remedy must come through con- 
ditions and environments. Every institution or usage that 
is a bar to universal sympathy and union must be abolish- 
ed. We must have no enemies, and no conditions that 
generate them. A universal fraternity can exist only 
under fraternal surroundings. It can have no place among 
antagonisms. Our institutions, for thousands of years, 
have generated wild-beast men, in defiance of religion; 



46 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

and the religion itself has partaken of the evil elements of 
humanity, and taught us of a cruel and avenging deity, 
dealing punishments here and damnation hereafter. 

But the recognition of the unity of God with man, 
and of man with man, in homogeneous identity, prepares 
for the advent of the God-man. He will grow out of this 
fundamental idea of the divinity of man, coupled with 
the proper surroundings for the growth and development 
of the divine spirit. For this divine spirit increases or is 
smothered by its conditions, as they are good or bad. 

And what is this divine spirit ? It is a sense and feel- 
ing of unity with God, in conjunction with unity and love 
towards man. The God-man must act toward his fellow 
man as God acts towards him. God is his umpire, and 
judges him through his own identity. There is no distant 
personal God, that may be looking another way, and be 
deceived, but himself is God incarnated; and a man can- 
not believe his own lies. 

Still, conditions lie at the foundation of worlds, science, 
religion, progress and everything else. Something pre- 
cedes the something that follows, and that which follows 
partakes of the conditions of its birth, be they perfect or 
imperfect. There is no such thing as a power that can 
override everything and violate principles. The Infinite 
always works conditionally, and within limits. And there- 
fore, whatever their religion or belief, there can be no 
God-men under conditions that inevitably create devil- 
men. It is the conditions that determine growth. 

Christ was an approximate God-man, and various coun- 
tries and ages have produced God-men in degree, because 
as individuals they were begotten, born and lived under 
conditions uncommonly favorable to the development of 
their higher nature. But the great mass of mankind, 
whether rich or poor, have been subjected to animal and. 
inferior conditions, and have exhibited nothing but animal 



KELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 47 

humanity. It was not possible for them to be anything 
else, under the influence of their environments before and 
after birth. 

Look backward at the state of the world in any age. 
Were the Jews ever in conditions favorable to the develop- 
ment of a high type of humanity, with their constant 
wars, internal conflicts, conquests and captivities ? Never. 
Has the Christian world ever been under favorable condi- 
tions, with its hierarchical, monarchical and aristocratic 
despotisms, its social inequalities, its constant wars and 
mutual butcheries? Never. Mankind have been too 
ignorant of the underlying principles of their religion, 
and incapable of organising a social system in correspond- 
ence with them. Christianity has exhibited no pre-emin- 
ence over paganism in the production of perfect men and 
women. 

But knowledge and advancement in various directions 
have prepared the way for a New Dispensation, social, 
political, and religious. All opinions and practices are im- 
provable. There is no more fixity in religious belief than 
in anything else. Every religion is simply an exponent or 
measure of the theological and mental status of the age 
in which it originates or holds sway. There are partial 
truths underlying all theologies; but creeds, beliefs and 
outward ceremonials modify themselves to suit the chang- 
ing conditions. Wherever the people are hidebound in a 
theology, they are hidebound in all else. To sleep and 
dream in an antiquated supernaturalism is to sleep and 
dream in everything. Wherever there is theological pro- 
gress in the world to-day, it has grown out of scientific 
and other progress. The theological advance has always 
been a result of outside growth and pressure. Theology 
never advances of itself, but is unwillingly dragged along 
with other things. And wherever at this day an ancient 
theology holds the people in bondage, there science is 
ignored, original thought and invention is stifled, and old 



48 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

customs and processes furnish a scanty reward for toil. 
Every improvement originates with outsiders, for a dead 
theology deadens everything with which it comes in con- 
tact. What are Brahminism, Mohamedanism or Catholic- 
ism doing for the world to-day ? What have they ever 
done? 

There can be no doubt that all our modern improve- 
ments, such as the steam engine, telegraph, railroads, and 
labor-saving appliances of all kinds were made by men 
intellectually outside of churches; more or less material- 
ists and unbelievers, with never a priest of any kind among 
them. No church or theology, notwithstanding centuries 
of priestly leisure, has ever done anything towards the 
progress of the race in inventions, arts or sciences; because 
science, investigation and original thought have always 
been deemed inimical to the prevailing religion, whatever 
it termed itself. The time which priests have wasted in 
the discussion and solution of imaginary and trivial accom- 
paniments of their theology, and the recording of, spurious 
miracles and supernatural traditions, might have revolu- 
tionised the world if properly directed. 

Through all the ages we encounter the great fact of 
the coming out of and going back to the earth of all di- 
versified forms of existence. Generations arise and dis- 
appear, one after the other. All things, through genera- 
tion, exhibit the constant flow of a natural immortality. 

Man and woman of three-score years and ten, what 
do you see around you ? The little prattlers of fifty years 
since ? No, they have changed even as you are changed. 
Where are your teeth and hair, your plump outlines of 
beauty and strength ? Gone. They have been gradually 
disappearing for years, and giving you warnings of the 
end of an incarnation. And to-day, at the family gather- 
ing, there are men and women you would not know but 
for constant intercourse with them. Who are they ? Your 
sons and daughters, who are taking your place. Thev. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 49 

are not the children you fondled, but men with beards, 
and matronly women. And along with them are children 
once more. • Who are they? Yourselves, coming again 
upon the stage of juvenile life, to go through similar ex- 
periences which you have already passed through. What 
better immortality can you have than one which comes 
upon the earth continually, in a new body, always fresh 
and sweet and pure? What better immortality could 
that toothless, deaf, and half -blind old man devise or de- 
sire ? What is there about himself that he would have im- 
mortal ? There he is once more, in children and grand- 
children, with the world and its enjoyments before him. 

And this is not a fanciful and incomprehensible immor- 
tality, in an imaginary sphere, but a visible and constant 
reality, always in view. It cannot be denied or doubted, 
for there is the man, and the man again in the child. 
There is a new body and a new identity, so far as anything 
can be new which is merely re-formed or re-created. 
Here is an immortality that furnishes continual proof. It 
has come down through the ages, and will continue in 
some earthly form forever. It gives you the opportunity 
to provide your self-successor with the advantages you 
have felt the need for. You can, through better condi- 
tions, have happier times in the new than in the old life. 
And you can begin to control these conditions whenever 
you choose, through such social changes as will be efficient. 
You can remove a multitude of obstructions which stood 
in your way, and made your life one of toil and anxiety. 
Wonderful is life, and immortality through life. 

And through all this immortality there passes along " I," 
the conscions existence. John dies and disappears, but " I " 
never die. " I " am the same " yesterday, to-day and for- 
ever." All the good things of life, essential to the con- 
tinuance or enjoyment of " I " come into view along with 
it, or can be produced by its efforts. And all through its 
immortal career this " I " constantly struggles to maintain 



50 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

and perpetuate itself. Its perpetuating powers are as 
strong as its maintaining impulses, because they are essen- 
tial for the continuance of " I " through its immortality. 

It is hard for the Christian to give up his imaginary 
theological immortality and become an unbeliever. He 
clings to theological immortality as the only refuge from 
annihilation. He asks, shall he, with all his attributes, 
utterly disappear forever ? He cannot endure the thought. 
He dare not think or examine. He trusts for future life to 
his theological imaginings, however destitute they may be 
of proof. 

But it would be just as rational to grieve because he 
does not realise a past life. Immortality implies unending 
existence. Immortal creatures cannot be constantly com- 
ing up from nothing, as theology supposes.. That which 
is to live again after death must have lived before present 
birth. If " I " is to be immortal in the future it must have 
been immortal in the past. 

And just such is the natural immortality in view 
around us. It cannot go back to its own beginning nor 
determine its end. All it can realise is that it exists. 
Every individual life is but as a drop in the constant 
stream of immortality. Its advent, with its brief term of 
experiences, sorrows and enjoyments, is but as the ticking 
of a clock to mark the flight of time. What it accom- 
plishes of good or great endures in the Memories and 
records of the race. It is extolled for its good and de- 
nounced for its evil actions. Every " I " is but an improved 
or degenerate successor of itself. We read of the great 
and good men of old. Who were they? "I." The same 
conscious identity that toils and works for man to-day. It 
is known by various names, and exists under different con- 
ditions, but it is always and everywhere the same "I." It 
is only " I " that is immortal, and there is but one univer- 
sal "I" under different forms and manifestations. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 51 

In this age of the world it is folly for theology to 
attempt to rest upon its ancient records, and declare them 
to be special revelations from God. For it is not possible 
for God to give any special revelations, or have personal 
favorites. God always works through natural, and never 
supernatural agencies. If any man conceives of a great 
truth, social, political or religious, it is because he has 
superior internal and external conditions for its discovery. 
It would be just as reasonable to attribute all of our 
modern discoveries to special revelations, as to suppose 
that Moses, Christ, Plato, or any of the ancient seers were 
specially inspired. 

The world is full of great truths and principles, and 
we discover them one after another. And the discoveries 
already made are as trifles compared with those to come 
in the future, under improved conditions of the race. 
What man discovers now, as in the past, of the new and 
wonderful, is simply through growth and enlarged oppor- 
tunities. All that we know to-day might have been known 
five thousand years since, had men been ripened to the 
discovery, for every truth and principle was there, ready 
to be appropriated. But the boy cannot exercise the func- 
tions of the man, simply because of unripeness, and not 
from inherent deficiency. Past ages were merely boy 
ages, filled with wild imaginings of things which time and 
ripeness dissipate or establish. 

And it is from that boy age that all nations derive 
their theologies. Why should a childish theology be main- 
tained after we have discarded all the institutions and 
usages originally connected with it ? What pre-eminence 
has the jews-harp we have retained, over the pagan rattles 
we have thrown away? 

The theologies of all past ages are as unreliable as the 
conceptions of children, and are filled with imaginary 
structures raised on imperfectly-conceived truths. Every 
new theology rested on that which preceded it. The con- 



52 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

ditions of growth necessitated this. And in the same 
manner, the coming New Dispensation, founded on the 
unity of God with man and of man with man, is but the pro- 
jection forward and ripening of the Christian idea of God 
made manifest in one man, as a son, and the paramount 
duty of neighborly love. We have now advanced to the 
still higher truth of the Universal Sonship, or incarnation 
of God in all men, and the universal unity of all men as 
one identity. This idea will admit of no social or religious 
antagonisms, for why should a man be at war with him- 
self ? And it necessitates the adoption of a social system 
and industrial usages that will destroy all antagonism. 
Man must be in harmony with man before he can be in 
harmony with God. He cannot be in harmony with the 
one while in discord with the other. 

And as all discords or harmonies arise from conditions, 
it is of paramount importance that the construction of 
society be based on such equitable conditions as will make 
harmony a thing of natural growth. Men cannot legis- 
late harmony, nor can it grow out of cold duties and mere 
forms. It must come up out of men's hearts, as a 
spontaneous and pleasurable impulse. But it can only 
grow effectually out of the best conditions and surround- 
ings for growth. And these arise from universal equitable 
conditions, and the absence of all causes for discords. 
And there is no more fruitful source of discord than class 
divisions and antagonisms, arising from confused ideas 
and practices as to what is "mine " and " thine." It is 
essential that a certain portion of the products of my labor 
should be " mine." The natural resources essential for all 
should be "ours." Justice to the individual underlies 
justice to society, just as the welfare of the individual 
forms the basis for the welfare of the mass. 

For ages society has been governed by monarchies 
or aristocracies, civil or ecclesiastical. The masses have 
been suffused with the idea of the natural inferioritv of 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 53 

the " lower " class, and the superiority of the " upper " 
one. The same idea permeates all theology. There is an 
imaginary King of all things, and lesser unsubstantial 
beings to do his bidding. Man has been taught that he is a 
poor, degraded wretch, utterly unworthy of all care or 
thought by the Divine Monarch, who nevertheless has 
some pity for him, and has provided a way into immortal 
bliss. And in all theologies the only true way lies in belief 
in that special theology, and the observance of its edicts. 
But everything proclaims the universe to be a Grand 
Republic. There is neither monarchy nor aristocracy. 
Every atom is the equal of every other atom, and repre- 
sents the same Divine Principle. And every form of 
being has its proper sphere in the great republic, and its 
duties to perform, not as an inferior, but as a co-equal. 
Nothing is to be held in contempt, for everything is a 
necessary part of the Great Whole, partaking more or less 
of the same character and attributes. 

Man, as the highest type of being on earth, has the 
characteristics of lower types of life as well as those per- 
taining exclusively to himself. His highest enjoyments 
come from the exercise of his highest faculties. Experi- 
ence having shown that his development in every respect 
depends on conditions, he must surround himself with en- 
vironments that insure the development of his highest 
faculties. He must replace the animal-man by the God- 
man. There is no end to the evolution of enjoyments in 
our progress towards God. 

The laws connecting ourselves with the things and en- 
ergies around us are yet as a sealed book. We have no 
conception of the power in store for us. We cannot 
obtain this -power until conditions and growth have quali- 
fied us to use it properly. Nothing is given to us or with- 
held as a curse, but only as a temporary obstacle, whereby 
we may attain more knowledge, strength, and capacity for 
progress. We are compelled to acquire a knowledge of 



54 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

good through a knowledge of evil. Every false theology, 
every governmental tyranny, every ruinous war, has been 
a necessary step towards progression. They were the 
rough cultivation humanity needed as a preparation for a 
higher growth. All forms of existence go through the 
like vicissitudes. The universe is but a sphere for the 
everlasting conditional progress of all within it. 

Therefore man is not dependent for future enjoyments 
on any theological monstrosity termed heaven, in some 
indefinite locality. He must create his heaven here, and 
has power to make it what he will. He needs no " thrones, 
dominions, principalities or powers," as directive agencies. 
His heaven must be a republic, with the greatest minister- 
ing to the least. All the heaven he was capable of enjoy- 
ing has surrounded him constantly through his long pil- 
grimage. So far it has been a heaven of sense, an animal 
heaven, just because man was little better than an animal, 
with indefinite aspirations and yearnings for a true man- 
hood, and the powers and enjoyments connected with it. 

We must learn to regard the past and present merely 
as steps to the future. A progressive universe will carry 
us along with it; and transmitted immortality gives us 
abundant time to achieve everything. What we cannot 
accomplish in one age we must carry forward into another. 
We must feel the trustfulness of children in connection 
with the efforts of manhood, for God is within us and 
around us continually. God never wearied nor rested 
through the long geological epochs that preceded and 
were essential to our advent. Then why should we worry, 
and deem a thing impossible, because we cannot accom- 
plish it in a generation or age ? u I " never dies. We of 
to-day are the men who built the pyramids and founded 
Rome; somewhat changed, somewhat progressed, through 
so many centuries, but filled with the same old yearnings, 
aspirations and hopes, modified by our changed conditions 
and surroundings. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 55 

No man ever realises personal birth or death. We 
merely awake and go to sleep. No new-born creature is 
ever astonished to find itself in the world. It seems to 
have come to a place familiar to it. A child is born. 
There is an endless eternity behind it ajid another before 
it. Do we ever grieve because we cannot realise any exist- 
ence in the past eternity, and have no personal memories 
connected with it? What folly to suppose that we are 
entitled to the eternity to come, unless we are connected 
with the eternity that has passed! Was not the one as 
desirable as the other? Surely the experiences and. mem- 
ories of one incarnation at a time are sufficient for pro- 
gress and enjoyment. 

Whatever principle is immortal in the future must have 
been immortal in the past. And the only principle that 
is immortal is "I." It is the everlasting representative of 
the Original Identity, and the medium through which it 
enjoys its own creations. 

With a human immortality before us on this world, we 
ought to be filled with pleasurable ideas, and know nothing 
of fears or anxieties. How grand the great truth that " I " 
have existed from the beginning, and can never die ! 
What possibilities are before an immortal and progressive 
" I," surrounded by natural agencies and energies capable 
of being controlled; enduring from century to century as 
a thinking and acting personage, with power to modify 
and change his surroundings, and create all conceivable 
enjoyments ! In comparison with this real and natural! 
immortality, deduc e d fr ona the nature o f things, how un-f* 
substantial and unsatisfactory the imaginary immortality; 
of antiquated theology, whether pagan or Christian? ' 

United and identified with God as we are, we cannot 
limit the extent of our dominion over the energies around 
us and within us. The animal-man will disappear and the 
God-man take his place. /In the conquest of natural agen- 
cies lie man's greatest triumphs (and his highest enjoy- 



56 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

ments. /) The nearer his advances to God, the greater his 
power. Man has yet to learn that God is within him and 
around him. \ An unprogressed theology has prevented 
this knowledge and separated God and man, filling the 
first with wrath and the last with fear.\ The New Dispen- 
sation will replace fear and doubt by love and trust. Man 
has been deemed rebellious when he was only ignorant. 
Theology treats him as a vicious and ill-broken horse, and 
delivers him over to future lashings with whips of fire in 
an unknown world. \ 

Our greatest modern inventions are but conquests of 
natural forces. The defective structure of society has 
turned these inventions to the benefit of individuals and 
classes, instead of society at large. Society itself cannot 
stand the strain of the inequalities of labors and rewards 
engendered by modern appliances. We must halt, and re- 
adjust, and reconstruct. To the bulk of mankind there is 
nothing worth living for here, and they have outgrown 
the delusion of there being anything worth dying for in 
the theological world hereafter. The masses are approxi- 
mating to the condition of the wild beast, and this wild 
beast is striving to discover how he shall best free him- 
self from his chains. Injustice and spoliation have hard- 
end his heart. It is not the mere animal-man but the 
devil-man, engendered by itself, that confronts modern 
civilisation. He has done so before, in other times, and 
the shrieks of outraged women and perishing children 
have been music to him, when mingled with the roaring of 
burning dwellings and the butchery of their defenders. 
Man is terrible as a devil, loveable as a man, wonderful as 
a Uod. 

The earth is an inexhaustible reservoir of beauties and 
enjoyments, to be called forth through knowledge and 
labor. We have great cities filled with beautiful struc- 
tures, that contain all varieties of fabrics of silk and 
wool, and cotton, and metals, wood and other materials. 



/ 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 57 

Paintings and statuary adorn our palaces, and books and 
musical instruments conduce to the enjoyments of their 
inhabitants. Also manufacturing establishments of all 
kinds, filled with wonderful machinery, are scattered 
around in all directions. The streets teem with men, wo- 
men and children, horses and vehicles. Railroads traverse 
the country in all directions, carrying passengers and com- 
modities from place to place. Telegraph wires enable us 
to converse with each other when separated by thousands 
of miles. Ponderous steam-engines perform the labor of 
Titans, and ask no food but fuel and water. The country 
is dotted with pleasant homes, filled with happy families. 

Yet all that we see around us to-day of animate or 
inanimate has come up out of the depths of this wonder- 
ful earth, ^o despised by theolo gy. And almost the whole 
of it has arisen in one brief century. And most of the 
things we see to-day will, by the close of another century, 
have disappeared again into the unknown earth. And age 
after age these things, like ourselves, come up and disap- 
pear without exciting any special wonder. 

These changes are made use of by the theologian as 
arguments to show us that things here are uncertain and 
perishable, and therefore we must look to an imaginary 
heavenly world for fixity and immortality. But the things 
around us change no more than we do. They, like us, 
illustrate birth, development and decay. And these con- 
stant successions are necessary accompaniments of our 
earthly immortality. An un changeable jBff&h or heaven 
would degenerate into a place of torment. As the ripened 
man is not confined to the stature and intelligence of the 
child, so no age is satisfied with the contingencies deemed 
adequate by a preceding age. There is not only an im- 
mortality of existence here on earth, but a constant change 
of conditions and surroundings to make this immortality 
pleasurable. Every conceivable enjoyment will come to 
us as we become able to discover it and create it by the 
exercise of our faculties. 



58 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

Instead of being a forlorn and miserable wretch, cursed 
by God and doomed to disagreeable toil and suffering 
throughout his brief days, in a land of barrenness, man 
is in reality a demi-god, an immortal God-Son, repre- 
senting an immortal God-Father. All the stores and en- 
ergies of earth are at the command of man. He has but 
willed it, and worked for it, and lo, in a century he has 
filled half a continent with his own wonderful creations. 
Enjoyments of all kinds await but his intelligent bidding 
to spring into existence. What unnutterable folly to give 
up the real and good we have here in a blind attempt to 
grasp the unsubstantial and impossible in an imaginary 
world! 

So far, our class divisions seem to have been necessary 
to secure accumulations of wealth, and establish a material 
foundation for progress. However they may have origin- 
ated, they have not only perpetuated but widened the 
social inequality, until some classes have everything and 
others nothing. There is no satisfying enjoyment for 
either class, and no stability in the position of those with 
the greatest possessions. Social reconstruction will neces- 
sarily be of advantage to both, because it will do away 
with all antagonisms, and ensure the stability of all that 
is good. Wealth is good, palaces are good, all sorts of 
labor-saving appliances are good. Social reconstruction 
does not come to destroy, but to increase and expand en- 
joyments, and place them within the reach of all. 

Whatever may happen in the near future from destruc- 
tive conflicts between rival classes, still, hidden in the solid 
earth, invisible and as yet intangible, lie new cities, 
new machines, new and vast stores of wealth to be 
enjoyed, and new men and women to enjoy them. These 
new men and women are ourselves, the cities and the 
wealth will be ours. All will in time come forth as natur- 
ally as, and far more harmoniously and equitably than, the 
wealth creations that surround us to-day. 



/ 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND SOCIAL REQUIREMENTS. 59 

Therefore is it not folly, utter insanity, for the rich to 
trample upon the poor, and make them beasts of burden, 
even for the short space of one incarnation of " I ?" 
Everything that degrades or elevates one generation or 
class acts unfavorably or favorably on the next. The poor 
and the rich are but the same identity under different con- 
ditions. 

Compromises, reconciliations, and an industrial recon- 
struction injure none, but will benefit all. Social recon- 
struction does not aim to take from those who have, but to 
create anew from the great storehouse of Nature for those 
who have nothing. A chaotic and destructive struggle for 
and division of what exists to-day would be a detriment 
to all classes. Everything should be done to prevent such 
a calamity. But it is suicidal to appeal to force, the com- 
mon weapon of despotism to maintain itself. For force 
invites force to oppose it, and out of these opposing forces 
have come the greatest disasters to mankind. 

The present condition of society demonstrates the anti- 
Christian character of its arrangements, and the powerless- 
ness of a misunderstood Christianity to cope with the in- 
numerable antagonisms that grow out of them. 

Society is as a ship sailing on a voyage of discovery. 
There are the crew and the officers. The crew work hard- 
and are half-starved, while the officers riot in luxury.! 
And yet there are plenty of good things on board to sup- 
ply the wants of all. The crew are about to mutiny, and 
enter upon a struggle for less toil and more rations. They 
number five to one of the officials. In a trial of brute 
strength, which is the most likely to be overpowered ? 

Shall they fight and half dismantle the ship during 
their bloody struggle ? It is a question both of the rights 
of man and the rights of society. The wage-workers 
may be destroyed by the thousands, and capital given to 
the flames by the tens of millions. And at the end of the 



60 THE NEW DISPENSATION. 

struggle comes the inevitable compromise, and the cessa- 
tion of the conflict. So end all wars. Why should they 
ever begin ? 

If there were but one mouthful, and the issue was 
between famishing men as to who should possess it, there 
could be no compromises. The winner would only perish 
a few hours later than the loser. But the coming strug- 
gle is not for the last mouthful. There is an abundance 
for all. It is to decide whether a class shall retain in per- 
petuity ten times more than it can consume, while another 
class is slowly perishing. The question is one of equity 
and Christianity as well as policy. It is a matter that 
really requires no argument, much less a brutal conflict. 
It is not whether those who have shall share with those 
who have not, but whether, through new industrial arrange- 
ments, the latter shall be permitted to create an abund- 
ant portion for themselves. Capital, worse than the dog 
in the manger, cannot consume what it has, and yet insists 
upon gathering more continually. 






III. 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 

%ffT IS useless to attempt to decide in advance what 
(ill shall be the exact structure of society even at the 
fjgp' beginning of the New Dispensation. But there are 
certain principles and usages in existing society which 
experience has shown to be effective for the production 
and distribution of wealth. The co-operation of labor 
and the co-operation of capital produce gigantic results. 
Our railroads, telegraphs, and other great works illustrate 
this. No individual effort could have accomplished any- 
thing in this direction. To effect these great works requires 
the organisation of labor in various departments. Some 
men work at one thing and some at another. The result 
is a railroad several hundred miles long, equipped with 
engines and cars of various kinds, for the conveyance of 
passengers and freight. 

All that was required to accomplish this result was 
labor, material, and a circulating medium, which could be 
exchanged for clothing, subsistence, and other essentials. 
Every large manufacturing establishment is carried on 
under similar conditions. Thousands of head and hand 
workers are employed, and they co-operate together to 
effect certain results. 

Whatever private capital and private organisation of 
labor can effect, either in production or distribution, can 
be quicker and better done by co-operative capital and 



62 NECESSITY FOE A NEW .DISPENSATION. 

organisation. Every army illustrates what capital and 
organisation can accomplish. An army of half-a-million 
of men, scattered throughout a country, is daily fed and 
provided for, and accomplishes certain results, without 
confusion or loss. The same principles of organisation 
which are applied to an army can be adapted to a nation. 
Labor can be co-operatively organised in every locality, 
for manufacturing or other purposes; furnished with cur- 
rency and materials, and so directed as to produce and ex- 
change unlimited quantities of fabrics and essentials. 
There should not be in the whole nation one person unable 
to procure employment. And the payment made can and 
should be adequate to support all in the comforts and 
luxuries of life, for it represents just what has been 
created. 

All this can be effected through local and general 
government, which must leave the political and enter upon 
the industrial phase. The nation must furnish work and 
supplies for the nation, through general co-operation. It 
can accomplish with ease what individual and corporate 
capital has hitherto failed to do. Governmental agencies, 
local or general, now provide for armies, navies, the sup- 
port of the indigent and insane, public education, im- 
provement of highways, the administration of justice, the 
repression of crime, the transmission of letters and news- 
papers, and almost everything essential for the preserva- 
tion and welfare of society, except its two great vital needs 
— employment and wages. For on abundant work and 
abundant wages rests the prosperity and security of the 
whole social fabric. With these, everything goes well, 
Without them, all goes ill. 

There is more reason why the collective authority, or 
government, should provide work and wages than for 
anything else it does, on account of their vital importance. 
They underlie everything and provide for everything. 
The present deplorable condition of society, with its pri- 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 63 

sons filled with criminals and its workhouses with tramps 
an<l paupers; its cities teeming with half -employed and 
unemployed men and women; its starving multitudes with 
no place to lay their heads; its unfortunate women com- 
pelled to sell their persons to sustain life, is a direct result 
of the lack of abundant work and abundant wages. And 
if private capital cannot furnish these, who but the collec- 
tive people should do so ? 

There never was, and never will be, a time when labor 
is not in natural demand, for it is the creator of every- 
thing essential to social welfare. To affirm that labor is 
not needed is to affirm that we all have more wealth than 
we can consume. But our artificial and inadequate social 
system, by separating labor from capital, leaves labor sub- 
ject to artificial demand, or the ability of individual capital 
to employ it. Labor starves because unable to exchange 
itself for equivalents that it needs. Capital groans because 
its business and profits are cut down by reduced consump- 
tions. The wrong imposed on labor reacts on capital. The 
very elements of society are at war with each other, and 
universal discord is eating at its vitals. 

The true and only remedy for existing complications 
lies primarily in abundant work and liberal wages. The 
wages determine the consumption, and the work replen- 
ishes what is consumed. But individual capital, naturally 
governed by selfish interests, incident to a false position, 
cannot furnish the required work or the necessary wages. 
Then what is to be done ? Shall society suffer wreck by 
reason of its self-imposed leaks ? Surely not. The remedy 
necessary is too simple and too easily applied to admit of 
further calamities. All that is essential is, that the na- 
tion should govern itself industrially as it does politically. 
(We repudiate classes as custodians of our political liber- 
ties, and yet suffer them to control our industrial destin- 
ies, on which hang everything of vital interest to the wel- 
fare of the masses. ) A political republic is a fraud when 



64 NECESSITY FOR A. NEW DISPENSATION. 

united with industrial serfdom. Liberty without bread is 
a delusion. Home comforts underlie progress, and these 
depend, not on ballots, but on work and wages. 

The social reconstruction which the age demands is not 
a movement environed by doubts and failures and losses. 
It is not an ephemeral remedy that will raise wages to- 
day and reduce them to-morrow. It contemplates a per- 
manent re-organisation of society, on the basis of indus- 
trial liberty from class control, and therefore the abolition 
of class distinctions. It opens a broad road to the unlimited 
development and happiness of the race. The tyranny of 
man over man, through class divisions, has been the theme 
for denunciation in all ages. 

We are all destined to an immortality here on earth. 
Shall whole generations of that immortality be blighted 
in the future as in the past, by excessive toil, poverty, 
ignorance, intemperance, and every other evil ? Shall we 
voluntarily continue such wrongs and miseries when the 
remedy is so simple and so easily applied ? Is it God or 
our institutions that make us serfs and hirelings to each 
other ? 

"With national co-operation, furnishing abundant work 
and ample wages; with social equality and the absence of 
every grade of despotism and tyranny; with a religious 
idea that embraces the whole universe and everything in 
it; the nation and the race will be put upon the road to 
infinite progression, social, scientific and religious. Then 
will come that promised time dimly foreseen by ancient 
seers, when swords shall be changed to pruning hooks, and 
man nowhere have an enemy. 

All the details of the industrial changes connected with 
the New, Dispensation will suggest themselves as we pro- 
gress along. Its ruling ideas of equity and equality must 
never be lost sight of nor set aside. It can never tolerate the 
social elevation of one individual or class built on the toils 
and degradation of another. Its basis is equity, and equal- 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 65 

ity in all rights and duties. Its social and religious status 
must correspond with each other. With man and his insti- 
tutions in harmony with God and universal law, who shall 
set bounds to human progression? 

The obvious and most easy way to commence an indus- 
trial reformation is by a partnership between labor and 
capital, with a proprietary interest by labor in all future 
accumulations of the partnership, leaving all present accu- 
mulations to the individuals now possessing them. Let 
labor go into partnership on wages and a share in the 
profits. Every able-bodied worker has cost some one from 
$2,000 to $4,000, and is worth that even on the old slave 
valuation. He should go into the partnership at his value, 
and offset a like value in stock or machinery. This renders 
it easy to divide the profits between capital and labor, 
according, to the value of each, in any co-operative enter- 
prise. 

Partnership elevates labor from its serf status, gives it 
increased income and better conditions for improvement, 
harmonises the interests of capital and labor, puts an end 
to antagonisms, and commences reforms where they are 
most needed. Labor at once takes its stand as a capitalist, 
with its future accumulations and progress under its own 
control. Such a conditional partnership will serve as an 
apprenticeship to higher social and intellectual position, 
and advances in general. Labor needs and must have 
such an experience, under co-operative or other direction. 

The general ignorance of the masses of mankind is due 
to their constant toil, their servile position and life-long 
poverty. The attempts to educate and elevate them fail 
because of their unfavorable surroundings. And we do 
not yet realise that a proper education comprises the cul- 
tivation and perfection of the whole man, visible and in- 
visible. ISo college or university contemplates this. Social 
divisions and antagonisms prevent the growth of any good 
seed that may be planted. We are prevented from giving 



66 NECESSITY FOE A NEW DISPENSATION. 

ourselves up to God and man as we ought to do. We are 
placed in antagonism with each and feel separated from 
each. The great school of society teaches us more of 
evil than of good. There is no homogeneity of interest or 
sympathy or religion. The hand of every man is more or 
less raised for defence or aggression. We preach peace, 
but are in constant war, open or concealed. 

It is not to be wondered at that there are national 
wars, private conflicts, robberies, murders, and wrong and 
oppression in every shape. All these evils are the natural 
products of the existing social order; and Christianity has 
waged an ineffectual war against them for eighteen cen- 
turies, and, under the present system, would struggle hope- 
lessly forever. We must have favorable conditions to 
work in, and then the perfect man and woman will come 
into the world, and transform it into a paradiser 

Every consideration, material and moral, demands the 
entire reconstruction of our social system, and the replace- 
ment of its antagonisms by harmonious relations. Our in- 
dustrial divisions and procedures cannot furnish work and 
wages, our educational institutions cannot rightly educate 
us, our religious system cannot Christianise us, our repres- 
sions and punishments cannot prevent the increase of crime. 
There is no motive whatever for retaining our semi-barbar- 
ous status, while a higher and better unitary civilisation 
is holding out its arms to welcome us. 

The great truth of the unity and homogeneity of God 
and man, and the homogeneity of all mankind, demands 
the proper conditions for its development and exercise. 
And these conditions must be found in a harmonious social 
order that ensures equal advantages to all its members, 
and is a unit in interest and feeling. Antagonisms con- 
tain the seed of all evils to society, religion and govern- 
ment. The great truth that God and man are one, and 
" I " and my neighbor are one, must be felt, and made 
pleasant to act upon continually. 



NECESSITY FOE A NEW DISPENSATION. 67 

This universal unity, and a social system in accordance 
with it, contains the essence of all that is good in religion, 
government and society. It does away with the necessity 
for repressive forces in government. It banishes the soldier, 
the prison and the executioner. It affords a sphere for 
the unlimited expansion of love and friendship. It illu- 
minates and warms society like a constant sun. There is 
no place for dreariness or darkness. The soul here finds 
rest in the universal soul, for the universal soul is the uni- 
versal "I." 

The New Dispensation rests industrially on every 
fundamental principle of political economy. Universal 
labor, collective accumulations and general exchanges, 
united with our boundless natural ^sources, will create 
and diffuse every enjoyment of life. This general national 
co-operation, and the payment of wages, is only a step 
to more perfect organisation of society in the future, 
which we shall naturally grow into. This movement is 
one that all are prepared to take, as it involves no sacri- 
fice of industrial liberty and imposes no irksome and un- 
accustomed restraints. It is merely a modification of 
present usages, such as is indispensable to provide work and 
wages for all, at all times. A central corporate authority 
— the nation — will supersede the present competitive cor- 
porations and individual enterprises, which are constantly 
proved to be incapable of managing the productive and 
distributive forces of the nation. 

There can be no acceptable modification of the present 
industrial system which admits of class distinctions and 
the social inferiority of one class to another. No class 
must be longer supported by the labors of others. Society 
must be homogeneous in position and interests. We enter 
upon a New Era, social, industrial and religious, and the 
old usages therefore necessarily give place to the new. 

The fundamental religious idea of the New Dispensa- 
tion — one God everywhere and one God-man everywhere 



Y t 

68 NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 

— furnishes a universal "test as to the equity or inequity, 
the fitness or unfitness, of the social changes necessary. 
Rival interests, like rival theologies and creeds, are a 
constant source of discord. \Every natural element or ' 
agency necessary to the support of life, the conservation a 
of society and the harmony ol aH interests, must ulti- 
mately become public property. v-J No individual can ever 
possess any rightful exclusive claim to the energies or earn- 
ings of another, nor to those natural resources which are 
essential to every one; and this puts an end to our future 
divisions into rich and poor. For all riches is the surplus 4 
of labor products which the divisions and usages of 
society now enable some classes^ to appropriate at the 
expense of others J^ ■ \ 

The organisation 61 industry i^i the New Dispensation 
will coincide with such usages and principles as experience 
has determined to be most effective in transacting ordin- 
ary business. There will be co-operative labor, national 
accumulations, and exchanges of products. All public 1 
necessities, such as the support of the infirm and disabled, 
education, improved dwellings, new machinery and manu- 
factories, and a multitude of other things, can be provided 
for by percentages levied on all products in addition to the 
labor cost, in the same manner as profit, interest and ex- y 
penses are now added to the cost of goods. This throws^ 
social burdens on society at large, through its consump- 
tions, as our federal taxation is now collected. For society 
will become one vast partnership, with equal interests 
everywhere. 

It is not to be wondered at that mankind have embraced' 
the imaginary promises of theology as a relief from the 
sorrows and sufferings met with in the world around them. 
But the world was not at fault, nor the Equitable Principle 
that governed natural agences. The sufferings of man 
have been inflicted by man himself, through his despotic 



51 

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child 

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NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 69 

governments, his cruel theologies, his ceaseless class con- 
flicts for wealth and power. The world itself is excellent. 
What better world can we desire ? 

Man or woman, look back for ten or twenty years. 
What has the world given you in that time? How 
many children to be worshipped ? How many friends to 
be loved ? How many good things to enjoy ! It is not 
the world itself, but your fellow man, that brings upon 
you poverty and suffering. 

And out of the depths of this same world will come 
children without end, lovely women and noble men, palaces 
to live in filled with every conceivable accessory to enjoy- 
ment. For thousands of years the earth has done this, 
and will do it in the future as it has in the past. Tour 
future heaven is invisible in the earth, only awaiting your 
enlightened efforts to call it forth and partake of its en- 
joyments, physical, intellectual and moral. But you must 
work for it as you work for your daily bread. You must 
work intelligently, as God works. There is everything of 
good that your imagination can conceive of, and nothing 
of evil that you cannot control and put an end to. En- 
joyments of all kinds will come forth as you bid them, for 
unnumbered centuries. 

We have eaten of the figurative tree of knowledge, and 
now the real tree of life is before us, displaying its immor- 
tal fruit. As we must live forever, here on earth, is it not 
better to live under good than evil conditions ? Amid 
enjoyments instead of sufferings? With hearts filled 
with thankfulness rather than with repinings and unsatis- 
fied yearnings ? We have only to choose. The same earth 
gives us grapes or thistles. God imposes no miseries; 
they are self-inflicted. We ought surely by this time to 
know good from evil, and must resolutely set to work to 
destroy what is evil and add to what is good. 

We must give up the idea that this earth is a " vale of 
tears," in which we are only temporary dwellers. As day 



70 NECESSITY FOE A NEW DISPENSATION. 

by day we arise in the morning and go to sleep at night, 
so generation after generation we go to sleep in dissolu- 
tion and awake in a new birth. It is the same incarnation 
of an original," I," the same identity, and the same atomic 
flesh and blood. The difference between the one and the 
other life lies in changed conditions and memories. We 
differ from each other no more, at any moment, than we 
differ from ourselves a year ahead or behind. We are all 
parts of an everlasting unity and identity. 

When this great and grand idea shall permeate nations, 
there will be no more wars between them. A cosmopoli- 
tan spirit of fraternity will be universal. We shall feel at 
home everywhere, and find brothers and sisters every- 
where. For we are brothers and sisters, all children of 
the same parent, all rays from the same Original Light, 
and are estranged now only on account of the national 
jealousies and social antagonisms which are forced upon 
us by an imperfect civilisation and religion. We shut our- 
selves up in narrow families and proscriptive churches. 
The affections and affinities have no room for proper 
growth and expansion. Love is dwarfed. The fragrance 
of humanity is wasted in a desert, or its buds forbidden 
to bloom. All outside of the family, the friends, or the 
church, is a barren waste, of no interest to us. Every 
evening the lamps gleam through the windows of count- 
less cheerful homes, while lighting the desolate beggar 
on his tramp. There are loving families, but the doors 
are barred against outsiders. If the narrow love within, 
confined to a family, brings much happiness, how much 
greater the joy from a love as universal as the attrac- 
tions, spreading its sympathies broadcast over the laud ! 

Man and woman, look at yourselves for a moment. 
Are you not living ! Did you ever die ! Your memories 
go back to a dim beginning, but all the way up you realise 
nothing but life. Friends and relatives disappear, but you, 
have never died. Life with you is constant, because you 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 71 

represent an immortal principle. And for thousands of 
years it has been the same. This " I " that permeates you 
has always existed. It has never died. Dissolution is 
impossible, for "I" is immortal. Day by day it is always 
" I " that toil or enjoy or suffer. We never realise death. 
" I " goes to sleep in one incarnation and awakes in another. 
And we must never forget that in every new incarnation 
it displays the effect of the good or bad conditions of its 
parentage. 

As we must therefore live on this earth for unnumbered 
centuries, let us have something worth living for. Let us 
banish care and sorrow and sickness. These come from 
bad conditions and surroundings, and can be remedied by 
good ones. The feeling that we are happy should be as 
constant as the impression that we are alive. There is no 
trouble arising from conditions that cannot be remedied by 
other conditions. 

What a great gift is life ! And how much greater is 
immortality, or continued existence in countless incarna- 
tions ! And what sufferings does this immortality entail 
under adverse conditions ! Which of us desires inordinate 
toil, semi-starvation, a constant abode among squalor and 
filth, a home in the workhouse or the prison ? Who wants 
to be a conscript, and die in torture on the field of battle ? 

We have suffered all this in the past, generation after 
generation. And, at last, knowledge has led us to discover 
the Tree of Life, and we know that we shall live forever. 
Let us now direct all energies to the destruction of evil 
surroundings and their replacement by good ones. 

From the conditions of existence, each one of us is a 
distinct personality, and we always remain so. We are 
always a living and acting " I," with a name and special 
personality. We are always ourselves, and nobody else. 
And ourselves are just what we happen to be in an exist- 
ing incarnation. We live forever in the Present. We are 
not the John and Martha that disappeared yesterday, 



72 NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 

but the John and Martha that live to-day. It is always 
to-day, and we are always here. We have the same love 
and care for ourselves in one incarnation as in another. 
It is the present incarnation only that is of importance to 
us. The memories of the fathers and grandfathers pass 
away with them. Their particular experiences and emo- 
tions were not worth preserving, for we are the same 
fathers and grandfathers under new conditions, with mem- 
ories and experiences applicable to us to-day. It is still 
the same "I," projected forward under new conditions. 

The devotee of old theology, filled with ancient super- 
stitions, may ask, what is to become of my " soul ?" Will 
it go into a new body, and change from body to body 
forever, by transmigration ? What is your " soul ?" What 
believer has ever yet had any definite idea of what he 
meant when speaking of his soul ? Your soul is simply 
your identity and personality, and is inseparable from 
body. Most assuredly identity and personality will exist 
forever. But what is there about John for which he craves 
an immortality as John ? Of what value are his memories 
of joys and sorrows ? We of to day cling to our identi- 
ties and memories as tenaciously as did the men who dis- 
appeared a century since. The identity, the " I," is the 
"soul," and it is projected forward, always re-appearing 
in a new body, prepared for new memories and experiences, 
which in their turn became as cherished and sacred as the 
old ones. We are born again and again, every time with 
new bodies and new " souls." It is always ourselves, and 
to-day, that is of most interest to us, for it is always our- 
selves that suffer or are happy, and we know only of to- 
day and a brief yesterday. 

The belief in what are termed " spiritual manifesta- 
tions " is an outgrowth from the belief in theological im- 
mortality. The phenomena witnessed and ascribed to 
" spirits," would never have been so connected had there 
not already been a belief in spirits. And a spirit is sup- 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 73 

posed to be an unsubstantial and shadowy something con- 
nected with the body, which has an independent existence 
after the body has dissolved into its original elements. 

But every attribute, force or quality of the body is a 
part of it, and when the body disappears and dissolves, its 
qualities and attributes necessarily disappear with it. 
When we set fire to a candle, the wick burns and generates 
light and heat from the tallow, until the whole candle is 
consumed, and the light disappears. It might as well be 
contended that the candle and the light can have an indi- 
vidual after-existence, as that the body and its products 
can exist after the body is consumed. The light and heat 
are products from the combustion of the candle, and the 
attributes of the body are likewise products of vital action 
and combustion. The two things are governed by sim- 
ilar laws. Therefore a "spirit" after death is as impos- 
sible as light after the candle is burnt out. " Spiritual- 
ism " is filled with frauds and delusions, but every real phe- 
nomena seen in connection with the "manifestations " will 
ultimately be found to be connected with powers in the 
living, and never with the dead. 

As yet we know but little of the attributes and powers 
of the human body, and are ignorant of the forces we can 
call into action, and the wonders we can perform. But, 
with the shackles of ancient theology broken, and an end- 
less immortality on this earth, we become qualified and 
have plenty of time to investigate ourselves under the most 
favorable conditions, and discover the source of those 
phenomena heretofore ascribed to outside supernatural 
influences. Man is the highest product of this earth, and 
the most potent and wonderful in every respect — a very 
storehouse of unknown forces and capacities — as yet an 
infant demi-god, with feeble intuitions respecting his grand 
achievements in the future. 

Bound for so many ages in the swaddling-cloths of 
theology, monarchy and aristocracy, and confused by then 



74 NECESSITY i'OK A NEW DISPENSATION. 

assumed " divine rights," man is only now beginning to 
stand alone, and depend upon himself. He does not yet 
realise that he is to grow into a giant, and control agen- 
cies and forces now deemed divine. 

But the foundation for future progress must be built on 
unity of material interests and efforts, guided by religious 
unity; and the religious unity of man with man must rest 
on personal unity. For all the power that man can exer- 
cise must be drawn from Original Power, and should be 
used for the universal good. The strong man may now 
grasp from the feeble one his material wealth, but selfish 
strength is, by the law of its action, confined to the lowest 
phases of conquest. The future and greatest triumphs of 
man will come from his efforts on behalf of his fellow- 
men, and he will aid himself through his struggles for 
them. As man gives to man of his powers so_God gives 
again to him. It is the action of a divine law of equiva- 
lents. The highest powers are always denied to him who 
would use them for his own exclusive benefit. 

Theologians speak of the body that perishes and the 
soul that is immortal. But the theological soul is an illu- 
sion. There is an outward and visible man, and an inward 
and invisible man, the whole forming an inseparable unity. 
They come into the world together, progress in growth 
together, and disappear together. The one cannot exist 
without the other. The immortality of the one necessar- 
ily includes the immortality of the other. And the im- 
mortality of both is assured through generation, for every 
being born into the world is but a continuance of the "di- 
vine incarnation, another ray of light from the Great 
Light. And these disappearing rays cannot go back to the 
Original Light, and maintain their individuality and mem- 
ories and qualities, as theology supposes. Their private 
individuality, as such, ceases as the light of the spark 
projected from the burning log. They are but indica- 
tions of, and momentary scintillations from, the great Cen- 



NECESSITY FOE A NEW DISPENSATION. 75 

tral Everlasting Light, attached to a body that is wonder- 
fully worked up day after day from the materials that 
formed the past. Nothing is lost, but re-created. Man is 
but the fabled phoenix, continually arising from his own 
ashes; and the fires that consume him insure his re-crea- 
tion. 

All organised bodies are wonderful machines for the 
separation of elements and their transmission into other 
forms of force. The acids, alkalies, metals and minerals 
within us maintain a constant action during life, and gen- 
erate the animal heat and other qualities essential to exist- 
ence. One organ acts in one direction and another in 
some other way. And these vital products are ultimately, 
through the delicate mechanism of the brain, transmuted 
into intangible thoughts and feelings. As well expect im- 
mortality in a steam engine or a magnetic battery as in a 
man, when machines and body have alike been broken up 
and re-formed into other things. 

The immortality of the principle of identity, projected 
forward age after age, compels us to recognise the fact 
that we are homogeneous and interchangeable bodies, aud 
that to each is attached a homogeneous identity. John 
exists for so many years, and then disappears. Co-existent 
with John, and in fellowship with him, is the same iden- 
tity under other names. Bodies with identities are con- 
tinually coming into the world and disappearing, and we 
give them names, and some of them are our wives and 
husbands, sons and daughters, century after century, and 
yet they are but one " I," which is perpetually coming 
up from the depths of the unknown. And the same loves 
and enjoyments are incessantly repeated. It caresses one 
set of children in one incarnation and another set in 
another incarnation, in different circumstances and under 
various names. The immortality of man is of the same 
nature as the immortality of God. It is a constant life, 
knowing nothing of death. 



/ 6 NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 

When this great central fact of the immortality of 
ourselves on earth, in every created form, through an ever- 
lasting identity or "I," is fully realised, a new heaven and 
a new earth will be opened to us. New duties, expanded 
sympathies, and a universal love will be forced upon us. 
Earth will grow into a heaven. We shall change from the 
chrysalis into the butterfly, and taste of new pleasures. 
Every child born into the world is ourselves, under new 
conditions; and the better the conditions, the more per- 
fect our enjoyments. 

A thousand men look at a woman, and they all see her, 
and yet there are not a thousand women seen, but only 
one, although a "thousand images are impressed upon the 
men. And to the woman's outward eyes there appears a 
thousand men. But to the inward and illumined eye there 
is only one man, reflected from a thousand points. And 
throughout all the nations of the earth there is only this 
one principle of an immortal identity, and these races, as 
well as all forms of life, are but conditional creative ef- 
forts to make this identity omnipresent. There are no 
more a multitude of identities corresponding to the men 
and women than a multitude of Gods. They are but in- 
carnations of the One Original Identity, just as all visible 
creations are but conditional manifestations of the One 
Original Creator. Therefore there is a universal relation- 
ship between all created forms, materially, and a relation- 
ship between all identities — the relationship coming from 
a universal diffusion of one principle. We are all condi- 
tional expressions of, and emanations from, the Infinite. 
The connection between God and his manifestations offers 
an inexhaustible source of wonder, admiration and love. 

The very nature of things ought to make it apparent 
to us that man was not created to toil and worry through 
one brief incarnation only. The intuitions of mankind 
compelled them to invent theology to remedy this appar- 
ent deficiency. Such a short and generally unsatisfactory 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 77 

existence would be unworthy the Author of All Life. 
The Great Immortal stamps a conditional immortality on 
all his works and incarnations. But an immortal exist- 
ence of the same one body and identity, crowded with the 
memory of centuries of toils and pains and failures, would 
be a thankless existence. Therefore has been given to us 
a constant change of body and identity; born into the 
world continually, and disappearing when it is no longer 
pleasurable to exist. So we have an immortality perpetu- 
ally renewed, daily appearing in new incarnations and under 
new conditions. There is no necessity for inordinate toil 
or poverty or suffering or wrong or hatred. Everywhere 
we meet ourselves, under various forms and developments. 
It is therefore essential that we escape all possible evils, 
and dwell in progressive harmony, which we can do only 
through equitable conditions and usages. It is constantly 
in our power to give pleasure to ourselves in the form of 
others. 

The bible, although one of the most ancient of books, 
and the foundation of a decaying theology, contains many 
gems of thought that will endure through all ages. Wis- 
dom is the same everywhere, and there were wise and good 
men in ancient as in modern times. But there is no more 
sacredness or divine inspiration in Jewish than in pagan 
mythology. In proportion as we discover and institute 
harmonious conditions we approximate to the Great Har- 
mony, and experience corresponding enjoyments. 

The great cities of the world bring forth good and evil. 
The ancient seers always denounced them, and fortold 
their deserved destruction. They illuminate man but 
darken God. They will disappear in the New Dispensa- 
tion, for agriculture and manufactures will be joined 
together, and the vast wastes of transportation saved. All 
cities contain too much of debased man and too little of 
Nature. They tend to destroy the religious idea, because 
there is no room for God among the selfish struggles and 



78 NECESSITY FOE A NEW DISPENSATION. 

worldly antagonisms of man. What need for God in a 
city, amidst ceaseless toil and vice and plunderings and 
wrongs ? Where can harmony dwell, when all is rivalry 
and competition, and the gains of some are comprised of 
the losses of others ? 

Our advances in machinery, by displacing" so much 
labor, require a New Dispensation for the adjustment of 
labors and rewards. How much pleasanter will human 
life be, passed in the varied occupations of agriculture 
and manufactures, with short hours of toil, ample wages 
for enjoyments, and palaces to live in, compared with that 
hopeless, unhealthy, and ill-paid drudgery which is now 
the portion of so many thousands of men, women and 
children in crowded cities ? 

Accustomed as men and women are to work for wages 
— so many hours for so much money — it will be necessary 
to retain this feature of the present industrial ^system until 
society is prepared for further advances. It furnishes 
rewards in proportion to services. And the true founda- 
tion for the necessary currency is labor or time of service. 
And general national co-operation, as it does away with 
class- distinctions and business profits, brings all persons 
under the wages system, as is the case in our political gov- 
ernments, from president downwards. 

With society organised into co-operative associations 
for the production and distribution of everything, statis- 
tics will determine how much of certain commodities will 
be required for the wants of society, 'with a surplus for 
contingencies. A natural and steady demand will take the 
place of the present artificial and fluctuating requirements. 

Under the unregulated complications of our present 
system, with the labor in one class and the capital and 
machinery in another, vast amounts of labor are wasted,. 
from the inability of capital to employ it and pay for it. 
But there never was a time when all the labor of the na- 
tion was not required naturally, and when all its products 
were not needed. 



NECESSITY FOR A NEW DISPENSATION. 79 

The New Dispensation conies to the rescue of all classes. 
There is no longer occasion for class divisions. The busi- 
ness of the world has outgrown the capacity of the man- 
ufacturing and trading classes to manage it efficiently. 
Nothing can now be properly controlled. One thing waits 
on another, and there is constant confusion, collision and 
loss to somebody. All production is speculative. Profits 
or losses are uncertain, and depend on contingencies which 
cannot be foreseen or provided for. 

But collective supervision, general and local, can 
provide for everything, and regulate everything, just as 
it does for vast armies. What is a nation but an 
army, engaged in creating instead of destroying? 
By insuring work and wages, it at the same time 
insures production and consumption. There can be no 
such thing as an able-bodied man or woman in need of 
work, food or clothing. Work and wages lie at the found- 
ation of social progress. No individual or class will de- 
pend on the patronage of another individual or class. 
Labor will be republicanised and equalised, and forever 
freed from bondage to classes. For class bondage is the 
crying curse of labor, insuring its perpetual serfdom, pov- 
erty, ignorance and undevelopment. 

Finding society divided into rich and poor, employers 
and employed, the men who formed our political govern- 
ments, and those who have carried them on, have taken 
these divisions to be natural and unchangeable. They 
have never sought to remedy social inequalities, nor. even 
to devise means to render the condition of labor less in- 
tolerable. All their policies have been directed to the 
advantage of the predominant interests; and as their ine- 
fficiency bred paupers and criminals, they could devise 
nothing better than workhouses and prisons. 

But all these social evils arise from class divisions, class 
dependence and class plunder; for these divisions insure 
wealth to some classes and poverty to others. Thev place 



80 NECESSITY FOE A NEW DISPENSATION. 

the many at the mercy of the few. They breed financial, 
industrial and political disturbances. The true remedy 
can only be found in a re-adjustment of the social system, 
whereby every man and woman who works may have 
abundance of the good things of life. And it is essential 
that all who are able to work should support themselve? 
by useful labor of some kind. 

The New Dispensation is to be harmoniously co- opera 
tive, and not competitive, either among individuals or na 
tions. There ought to be, and always will be, friendly 
intercourse and equitable exchanges of products of some 
kind, rendered necessary by climatic distinctions. But the 
modern idea of cheap production, secured through low 
wages, inordinate toil and the misery of the masses, must 
be eradicated. And this can only be doue through govern- 
mental control of production and distribution, foreign and 
domestic. 



IV. 



AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

ND NOW, Christian man and woman, in. what con- 
3J^ sists your Christianity? In dry creeds and un- 
^5Qi£> meaning forms or in feeling and action ? Are you 
for or against such a re-organisation of society as will 
secure harmony and plenty universally, and do away with 
criminals and prisons, soldiers and wars, and those multi- 
tudinous evils that have cursed man from the beginning ? 
Are you ready to replace injustice and hatred by univer- 
sal equity and love ? Are you as ready to make efforts 
for the Christian idea of peace on earth and good will to 
man, as to talk about it ? The establishment of this divine 
law requires from you no personal sacrifices and no martyr- 
doms. It does not even demand that you give of your 
superfluities to the needy. All it asks is your recognition 
of the common rights of humanity to employment and an 
equitable reward. 

The masses of wage-workers, men and women, demand 
the right to work for themselves, and to receive just pay- 
ment for it. Is there anything wrong in that ? They de- 
mand that what they can earn by their own labor shall not 
be taken from them by other classes, through interest and 
profit. Is there anything wrong in that ? The right to 
toil, and to receive the earnings of that toil, lie at the 
foundation of social reconstruction; and the structure itself 



82 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

will consist of such arrangements and usages as will secure 
this in the manner best suited to the welfare of the indi- 
vidual and society. The whole effort and end of the 
movement does not contain one un-christian sentiment or 
action. It is based on the very principles uttered by 
Christ himself, and for which he perished at the hands of 
usurers, extortioners, hypocrites and hidebound priests. 

Christian, you have been trying to " find Christ " for 
eighteen centuries:' Where have you been looking ? Up 
in the sky, lost in vague imaginings and futile hopes and 
wishes. And yet an this time " Christ " has been your 
neighbor, and you have^ used him harshly, while cursing 
the Jews for putting him to death. "Christ," like all 
others, only disappeared in one incarnation to appear again 
in another. He is immortal here on earth. You meet 
him every day, toiling in the workshop or the mine, or as 
a miserable " tramp," having " no place to laf his head." 
He told you all this, but you did not comprehend the 
great truth, for your eyes were obscured by the glittering 
frauds of the church and the world. Common men and 
women have seemed too common to be Christ. You, like 
the Jews, look even to-day for a king coming in great 
glory! 

You have shed tears over Christ's sufferings long cen- 
turies since, but you pass him by every day unheeded. 
Open your understanding. Look at God through man, 
and the eternal Sonship of Man. Wherever man is, 
there is God incarnated in a Christ. Christ and man 
are one. They represent a common incarnated Son- 
ship. The Christian world must awake from its long 
and dreamy sleep, and comprehend the realities of man's 
existence. If you really look for Christ you will find 
him everywhere around you, a persecuted toiler, pa- 
tiently awaiting for the coming of " the kingdom of 
righteousness," which is to set man free from bondage to 
man, and establish a new earth and a new heaven. The 



AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 83 

money-changers and the Pharisees persecute Christ to-day 
as in old times. They make offerings to the priest of a 
portion of their spoils. They worship the world and its 
vanities, and know nothing of God. Christ is to-day in 
the workhouse and the prison. He is everywhere where 
poverty and distress exist. 

It is affirmed that the advent of a deliverer was foretold 
to the Jews, and that this deliverer was Christ, who was 
refused by them on account of his obscure birth and in- 
ferior surroundings. It is also supposed that Christ is to 
come again in "the latter days," in "great power and 
glory." Truly, he comes again to-day, not as a personality 
but as an idea. And this idea is only a further projection 
forward of the law of love, through a universal identity 
and a universal Sonship. 

No great idea and no individual ever came into the 
world under supernatural conditions. Theology had spoiled 
the ancient Jews as it has the modern Christians. The bene- 
factors of mankind have always been obscure men, as were 
Moses and Christ. And it is not the individual that is of 
importance, but the idea which he proclaims. The " second 
coming," if there is to be one, will be merely a re-assertion 
and further elucidation of some great fundamental truth; 
the truth itself, and not the individual, being the Christ, 
the thing looked for and needed. Does not the universal 
Sonship of man and his unity with God, and the unity of 
man with man as an immortal identity, — being a projec- 
tion forward and ripening of the Christian idea of a special 
Sonship, — constitute the "second coming?" Neither the 
earth nor the heavens ever were or ever will be affected by 
any change of dispensations. 

These are truly the "latter days," not of the world 
nor of man, but of the present chaotic Dispensation. 
There will be a "new heaven and a new earth," all com- 
ing in a plain, matter-of-fact way, as things always have 
and always will come, notwithstanding the credulity of 



84 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

mankind and the deceptions practiced upon them. God 
necessarily permeates every movement, whether recognised 
or not, and every change comes through natural agencies. 

It is not a man nor a god, but an idea, a New Dispensa- 
tion, that comes as a deliverer. Mankind must give up 
their heroes and hero-worship. God gives no man a special 
commission nor special powers. He speaks to all alike, 
but it is only now and then that a man hears and under- 
stands. 

The age needs and must have an expansion of its social 
and religious ideas and usages. We are cramped up in an- 
tiquated bands of all kinds. Science and enlightenment 
are constrained to bow down their heads to ignorance and 
intolerance. The God-like in man is subjected to the 
brute-man. The ban of social outlawry is as active to- 
day as it was centuries since. The scientific, social or 
religious innovator is considered a benighted heretic, whose 
destruction gives God pleasure. 

It is as difficult to find a sound spot in modern as in 
ancient society. We are but ignorant and superstitious 
pagans, misnamed Christians. We represent ancient 
paganism exclusively, and have retained pagan institutions 
and surroundings. To become Christian, we must have 
Christian surroundings, and proper social conditions for 
Christian growth. And these can only be secured through 
an entire change in our industrial and social status, and its 
replacement by a Christian system of equity, based on the 
recognition of the unity of God and man, and of man with 
man. We must come to realise the great central fact of 
existence, that every man and woman is ourselves, under 
other conditions; and construct a social system on this 
basis. When we do our whole duty to man we have done 
it to God. Facts, and not fictions, underlie the religion of 
the New Dispensation. 

And the great material requisite of a perfect social 
system consists in an adequate supply of the necessaries 



AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 85 

of life, united with the labor necessary to secure them — 
not the embruting toil which is now the lot of the masses, 
but health-giving exertion. Plenty of work is assured to 
all generations, by natural causes, and those who do the 
work must receive an ample recompense. And this re- 
quires that the control of labor be taken from individuals 
and classes, and placed in society at large. 

If religious precepts and creeds alone could have per- 
fected mankind, nothing more was needed than Judaism 
or Catholicism, with their assumed divine rights and 
powers. Judaism failed because it was narrow and pros- 
criptive, and given only to a " chosen people." Catholic- 
ism, or reformed Judaism, failed because it was not based 
on an equitable social system; because it was autocratic 
instead of republican, and power was vested in the few 
instead of the many; because it rejected reason, science 
and progress, and was intolerant and tyrannical; because 
it admitted of social inequalities, and taught the lower to 
submit to the higher orders; because it had no desire and 
made no attempt to establish the equitable social and gov- 
ernmental conditions and surroundings essential to the 
elevation of humanity; and because it was always opposed 
to universal enlightenment and advancement. It assumed 
to be something, not of man, but midway between God 
and man; deriving an exclusive authority over the last 
through the express ordination of the first. 

The highest civilisation must be homogeneous and re- 
publican, knowing nothing of exclusive rights or author- 
ity, creeds or confessions of faith. Its foundation and 
its superstructure must alike rest on man, as the represen- 
tative of God. It must approach the universal God through 
universal man, socially and religiously, for God and man 
are a unity in duality. 

There is no longer a middle ground to stand upon for 
saint or sinner. There is no refuge in a church or a creed 
for injustice to man or hypocrisy to God. The choice now 



86 AJtf APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

lies between the Old and the New Dispensation — the one 
with all the wrongs and evils that have cursed man from 
the beginning; the other with the peace and enjoyments 
that flow from universal equity and harmony. Choose 
that system that comes nearest to your ideal of what the 
world and the man ought to be, and prepare to suffer the 
miseries connected with the one, or to realise the enjoy- 
ments inseparable from the other. 

Trust in God, and assist God through your own efforts. 
The New Dispensation contains the Promised Land which 
Jew and Gentile have been for centuries in search of. It 
is a land flowing with everything that man has need of 
or can enjoy. It is that bright heritage which has been 
dimly * foreseen for so many centuries. Will you be of 
those that cross the Red Sea into social and religious 
freedom, or will you remain in everlasting bondage to 
fraud and toil and misery and crime? 

The New Dispensation, while it gives us a better world 
to live in, takes away nothing that is worth retaining. 
It brings us nearer to God and man. It gives us something 
to worship and everything to love. What shall we wor- 
ship ? It seems impossible to worship an abstraction. An 
indefinite God is a void, and this is all that the Christian 
world has had. We must see, feel and realise that there 
is something to be worshipped, and that something must 
be exterior to ourselves, and which we are constrained to 
love above all things. The savage gives vent to this feel- 
ing in the worship of idols, which are but imperfect repre- 
sentations of an idefinite Something he pays tribute to. 
The ancients had their marble statues of divinities. The 
Catholic church holds up the representatives of the mother 
and child, and the man crucified. The Protestant world 
still clings to the cross, but it is moved by no inspiration, 
for there can be no inspiration derived from a dim and 
imaginary personality, more to be feared than loved. 



AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 87 

Does the world around us give us nothing to worship ? 
Yes, all the way upward through life. For the spirit of 
worship is the spirit of love. Beginning in childhood, 
what does the child worship and trust to ? Mother and 
father. What does the young man worship ? The woman 
he loves. What do parents worship? Their children. 
We are compelled to worship the Infinite through its finite 
incarnations, while implicitly trusting it as a Parent. And 
is not this all that is necessary? Do we not appreciate 
the giver through his gifts ? And so long as human beings 
endure there will be something to worship — a visible in- 
carnation and approxmiation to the Invisible Perfection. 
We need no priests or temples or ceremonials to express 
our divine emotions. The worship arises spontaneously. 
We are constrained to worship some human form as the 
incarnation of the Ideal. When one object is lost, the 
heart seeks another. A healthy and a natural man or 
woman can always find some one to worship. 

To worship is a necessity of love, and is its highest 
form of expression. Worship is not fear nor reverence, 
but love; and love is but an influx of the divine spirit. The 
New Dispensation, by establishing better institutions and 
surroundings, will lead to universal love by banishing all 
causes of hatred. Faces and forms will become more 
beautiful and divine as our emotions become refined and 
purified. There will be nothing that is not loveable, and 
no class or class distinctions to interfere with our tributes 
to each other. \ We shall become more in oneness with the 
Universal Love. The Infinite love of God, poured out 
upon every individual, will be reflected from one to another 
every where. VX 

For, let us look upon the universe and all that it con- 
tains, with the eye of the man of science or the theologian, 
Infinite Love is visible everywhere and at all times, con- 
stantly engaged in efforts to add to the enjoyments of all 
forms of existence. Even the afflictions connected with the 



88 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

present dispensation are given in love, to lead our thoughts 
forward and upward to better and higher conditions. Our 
sufferings stimulate us to inquiries, and the discovery of 
remedies. The Great Parent loves all his incarnations 
with an infinite love. It is blindness to ascribe this or 
that to what are termed mere natural processes and cold 
and unfeeling laws exclusively. At the bottom of all 
things lies one universal law of love. 

Christian man and woman, do you acknowledge this ? 
Do you realise it ? No. Your debasing theology and 
imperfect social surroundings give you but dim and crude 
conceptions of the wonderful love of God, and the neces- 
sity for a similar love among mankind. You must change 
your present conditions in order to become truly humanised, 
and able to enjoy God. Prayers will not liberate you from 
your earthly bondage. You are environed by the filth of 
the world, and it defiles you in despite of your best reso- 
lutions. " The world, the flesh and the devil " alternately 
seduces you or drives you. Your whole bible contains no 
remedy apart from conditions. On these only can you 
build a fabric of the religion of love that will endure for 
ages. " ' I ' and my father are one," is but a dead precept 
until you realise that "I" and my neighbor are one, and 
establish the proper conditions for unity 

It is useless to expect to elevate and refine the masses 
so as to prepare them for the New Dispensation while they 
are enveloped in the disabilities of the Old. Revolutions 
come whether all are prepared or not, and they gradually 
mould the people into the thoughts and policies requisite. 
As well attempt to teach an infant to walk before it is 
born. The underlying principles of any movement are 
easily comprehended, for they are invariably struggles for 
more liberty. The great principle of our Revolution was 
the right of the people to political self-government. How 
it was to be carried out did not enter into the controversy, 



AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 89 

nor was it considered whether the masses were prepared 
for it or not. The few enlightened always lead the many 
unenlightened. 

And now the corresponding great principle comes up 
of the right of the people to industrial self-government. 
How this shall be established depends on such contingen- 
cies as may arise, and which cannot be foreseen. But the 
principle of itself is easy of comprehension, and such as 
all classes can understand at once. Capital must acknow- 
ledge the right of labor to industrial independence, or con 
tend for its perpetual serfdom and inferiority. It is the 
old conflict of the centuries for more liberty and light. 

Capital and labor now confront each other on this 
issue throughout the United States and Europe. Wild 
imaginings and hostile thoughts grow day by day. All 
revolutions come finally to the last test, and it is always 
one of force. Shall we be wiser than other generations 
have been ? Is it not imperatively necessary for the wel- 
fare of society that some element of harmony should be 
introduced ? What government or class ever lost anything 
ultimately by concessions and compromises? How much 
have they not lost by a contrary course, and an appeal to 
brute force ? t 

The refinement and culture of the world is more or 
less associated with capital. It comes from leisure and 
accumulations. But in what does this so-called culture 
consist ? In the ability to read Greek, Latin and other 
languages? In the writing of books and newspaper 
articles ? In the filling one's self with the thoughts and 
aspirations of other men ? This is culture to a certain 
degree, but it goes not beyond self. Such culture may 
raise a few pinks and roses for its own momentary gratifi- 
cation. Or it may plant a few feeble trees, that wither up 
within a generation. But the true work of all culture is 
to rear oaks that will last for centuries, and pyramids of 
truths that will endure as long as the race. 



90 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

How can the man of true culture, and the high aspira- 
tions that ought to be associated with it, content himself 
in these days with scratching his name upon a pane of 
glass, or carving it upon a fence-board? If any man 
desires fame, and to live in the future, he must fearlessly 
project himself into the future, and accomplish something 
that the future will appreciate. Most assuredly it will 
take no interest in our common-place political and theolo- 
gical disputes; and will utterly repudiate our howling der- 
vishes that devote their pulpits and presses to the misrep- 
resentation and defamation of great principles. 

The little culture of our politicians and priests spoils 
them. It excites a desire for notoriety, which is mistaken 
for greatness. They are filled with the delusion that great- 
ness can grow out of littleness. They crave high honors 
and large influence. With them greatness consists, not 
in the qualities and aspirations of the man, but in his posi- 
tion. They do not realise that an ass is an ass, whether 
in a stable or a pulpit, or the halls of legislation. •'They 
go into office as nobodies, are nobodies while in, and then 
go out as nobodies. Men cannot rear a temple of sand. 

Even at this early day, where is the fame of our public 
men of the last half century ? \ What deep mark did they 
make upon their age ? Do their names, with all their ad- 
vantages, stand as high as those of the founders of the 
republic ? Certainly not. Half of them are forgotten as 
soon as they go back to private life, because they but 
echoed the Present, and were inattentive or dead to the 
Future. 

But now there is an opportunity for making deep marks 
as well as shallow ones. A New Revolution is upon us, 
to complete the structure of which the other laid the 
foundations. It comes by the laws of progress, and will, 
accomplish its mission, sweeping away all obstructions 
like an avalanche. It needs the assistance and guidance 
of the best minds and hearts of the age. They must 



AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES, 01 

thjow away all fear of the tin trumpets of the press and 
the pulpit. They must come before the world as true 
men, who can compass all ages, and to whom all ages are 
alike. I 

If any man desires greatness, surely there was never a 
better chance to achieve it. But it must be worked for 
and earned. It will not grow and thrive on the husks 
that a prevailing theology and partisanship offer as food 
and pay. It must feed on great ideas. These only can 
produce great men. 

And you, women of the world, what is your position 
in the present dispensation ? Are you satisfied ? Does 
the Mosaic or the Christian dispensation do justice to you ? 
No. Woman has always been considered an inferiqr, more 
in the nature of a servant than a co-equal of man. Woman 
had no justice in the theology of Moses, neither did Christ 
attempt to elevate her into equality with man. He has 
nothing to say in condemnation of the slavish status of 
woman in his age, neither had his biographers or followers. 
Even the biblical record of the assumed God-man contains 
no particulars relative to the God-wife and God-mother. 
We are told nothing respecting her personality. She lives 
and dies in obscurity, like the wife of any other laboring 
man, distinguished for nothing but bearing a son out of 
wedlock. Whereas, if the record were true, and her ma- 
ternity supernatural, she should have been the equal of 
Christ. But Christ himself neVer claimed a supernatural 
begetting by a '" Holy Ghost," nor did any of his neigh- 
bors ever hear of anything of the kind. They knew him 
only as the son of the carpenter, playing with his brothers 
and other boys. They would have ridiculed Mary had 
she told them about any connection with a "Holy Ghost." I/ 
It is clear that she never heard of anything of the kind, 
but was a faithful wife to the carpenter, f All these super- 
natural fables were manufactured long after the death of 
Christ and his family. ' 



92 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

The true woman can come only out of the New Dis- 
pensation. She and man are one, the man and woman 
constituting humanity as a unit. ' She is the only medium 
through which man can worship, and she alone gives rise 
to his highest and holiest emotions.! She will take her 
true place, in the religion of the future, as constituting 
God's most perfect incarnation.^ While man represents a 
divine Sonship only, woman stands on the higher plane of 
a divine Wifehood and the divine Mother of the race. 

The very excellencies of woman's character have made 
her the supporter and defender of all theologies, no matter 
how little they did for her. She is the bulwark of the 
Christian churches to-day, by her influence compelling man 
to tolerate a delusion which they would otherwise repu- 
diate. , She is ready to sacrifice anything for the interests 
of religion, true or false, and the welfare of man. f 

But woman, where and what is your religion ? Is it 
outside of or in the churches ? Is it at home or abroad ? 
Is it an emotion or an incomprehensible creed ? Is not 
motherhood your divine mission, and is not God incar- 
nated in your children ? Of what use is the priest to you 
in your duties and enjoyments ? Does he carry you to 
God as your children do ? Do his dull fictions tend to 
your culture or elev r ation? Are his dry creeds and ser- 
mons felt to be a necessity ? Is he not rather tolerated as 
a make-shift, in lieu of something better, to assist you in 
gratifying the natural aspirations of the heart, which are 
always reaching after the Great Good ? UiV • 

Woman, does the preaching you listejrYto, week after 
week, come to you as an echo of the voice of God? Is it 
not rather a confused and unintelligent noise, that distracts 
your thoughts and prevents the inward communings which 
you crave for between yourself and an Infinite Ideal that 
stands somewhat in the relation of an infinite husband ? 
A being that you love, and trust implicitly for help in 
all your afflictions ? Your sex constitutes the Universal 






AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 93 

Wife and Mother. Compared with you, where stands 
man ? Why longer give the direction of your heart and 
mind to a self-constituted priestly intermeddler, who knows 
nothing of your necessities, cannot comprehend you powers 
: and denies your equality? » The most pitiless of slave- 
drivers is the priest, and his most pitiable slave is woman 
— a slave to man through theological fictions, a slave to 
ignorance and toil through her servile position, a slave to 
superstition through her false education and the absence 
of all real mind and culture. Woman, are you satisfied 
with your position, or do you not think it might be 
changed for the better in a New Dispensation ? 

And you, manufacturer, merchant, and business man 
in general, what special inducements does the present 
social system offer to you, that it should be retatned ? Is 
there anything about your affairs that can be regarded as 
a satisfactory certainty ? Can you depend on your sales 
and profits under all contingencies ? Are you beyond the 
reach of gluts, panics, and failures ? Certainly not. You 
are at the mercy of business complications that you cannot 
control. The New Dispensation, in its improved and en- 
larged processes of production and distribution assures 
you the certainty of ample means for support, with con- 
stantly increasing means for culture and refinement, and 
the absence of harrassing cares. Tour present position 
unfits you for Christian or industrial brotherhood. With 
you, a man is a mere machine to make money by. You 
cannot realise that God is in him or anything else. God 
has no place in your thoughts or books. 

Your position also outlaws you from the higher pro- 
gress. From necessity or choice, you give up your soul to 
"business," the petty frauds of which demoralise you. 
This "business," with its whole train of accessories, is 
one of the giant curses of the age. It is a vast machine 
for the plunder of wage-working men and women.; It 
was essential as a preparation for the coming era, but now 



94 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

there are no inducements to retain it. The co-operative 
principles it has evolved will aid in its destruction and 
reconstruction. 

Class divisions demoralise men, and destroy all frater- 
nity. Those uppermost learn to regard as a natural right 
what is only an artificial wrong, and they defend that 
wrong at all hazards to themselves and others. They are 
blinded to the iniquities of society. They think it right 
for some classes to live in idleness and luxury at the ex- 
pense of others. They regard as outlaws and public 
enemies all who question that right. 

Failing to stay the progress of the New Dispensation 
by unconstitutional legislation, will they appeal to force, 
as upper classes have done in all times ? Have they not 
everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by internecine 
conflicts? Have their educational and other advantages 
reduced them to the status of barbarians ? Can the in- 
evitableness of changes in all ages teach them no wisdom ? 
Do they realise the fact that they are contending for the 
power to plunder and enslave their fellow-men ? ^'^ 

As labor creates everything, its true position should be 
that of partner with capital. Labor and capital should be 
a unit, which they never can be outside of an equitable 
partnership. The plunder and debasement of labor by 
capital is the greatest of wrongs and tyrannies. Capital . 
complains of its small profits and ruinous competition.' 
Where is the remedy to be found except in equitable part- 
nership with labor and the destruction of all competition? 
The value of commodities can be adjusted to high wages 
as well as low ones. Society itself must put an end to 
conflicts between labor and capital, and compel partner- 
ships, as it settles other social disorders. Men of capital, 
is there any real difficulty in the way of such a plan 
of adjustmeat ? No, except in your avarice and love of 
power. 






I 



AX APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 95 

And you, men and women of culture and education, 
does the present social system satisfy you, and come up to 
your ideal ? Do not all the better impulses of your hearts 
and minds rise up in rebellion against it ? Does it yield 
you half the advantages and enjoyments you long for? 
Does it afford you opportunities for the highest culture, 
physical, mental and emotional ? Do you not constantly 
bewail your obstructions, your inability to overcome them, 
and your consequent short -comings? Look at the New 
Dispensation in all its aspects and study its possibilities, 
and contrast it with the present. Bring your culture and 
intellect to bear on the social reconstruction which is 
coming upon us. Who shall lay the foundations for the 
new structure, the ignorant or the enlightened ! 

And you, wage-working man and woman, what hope or 
enjoyment is there for you in the Present Dispensation? 
Are you and your posterity not doomed to class servitude 
and hopeless toil ? What chances have you for intellec- 
tual progress and refinement, amidst the demoralising 
influences of over-work or no work, and your poverty- 
struck surroundings ! While standing higher than ani- 
mals, you are less than men and women. Human beings 
require humanising surroundings for the proper develop- 
ment of the qualities that make true men and women. 
The present social system holds you as in a vice, by which 
governments, classes and individuals use you, abuse you 
and plunder you. 

But the New Dispensation gives you industrial liberty, 
with self -employment and an ample reward for your labors; 
palaces to dwell in, and all the refining influences now 
enjoyed only by the wealthy. It will be for you to 
decide your hours of work and your wages. You will 
know no more of poverty, intemperance and degradation. 
The whole results of your labor will be yours to enjoy 

the manner you think best. Surely you will not hesi- 
tate as to which Dispensation is the best for you. 



96 AN APPEAL TO ALL CLASSES. 

And now, men and women of all classes, high or low, 
rich or poor, the time has come to choose between the Old 
and the New. Try to let your reason, and not your pre- 
judices, guide your judgment. We live in an age of irre- 
ligion, crimes, intemperance, plunderings and demoralising 
associations. What possible good can flow from these 
things ? We live in an era of business depressions, uncer- 
tainties, losses, impoverishments, breaches of faith, non- 
employment or inordinate toil. # Are these things desir- 
able, and necessary to be retained ? We live in an era of 
religious blindness, hypocrisy, disbelief in God and mis- 
trust in man. The moral constitution of the nation is 
giving way under the perverse influences that operate on 
every class and condition of life. Blind guides hold forth 
in the sanctuary, and confuse the understanding. Men 
are driven from God by their surroundings, and are every- 
where at war with each other. 

Is it not time for a New and a higher Dispensation, 
that will put an end to the multitudinous evils of the 
present? Is there a God and a moral law, or is all reli- 
gion a pious fraud, invented to hold in slavery the minds 
and bodies of men and women ? Do we not need a grand 
and universal awakening to the importance of the crisis 
and the issues that are coming upon the world ? 















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